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"Man's inhumanity to,,,giant squid"

So some bods finally photograph a giant squid in it's natural environment. And how do they achieve this feat? With hooks and bait.

[URL]http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4288772.stm[/URL]

Nice one.

I hardly call a giant squid struggling to escape from a home-made mace and ripping off one of it's own tentacles "natural".

"Kubodera and Mori took more than 550 images of the giant squid as it made repeated attempts to detach itself."

So they sat watching it struggle, filled with glee at what they'd done? I know millions and millions of fish are caught and eaten daily, but a marine creature we know nothing about should be approached with more care, in my opinion. Just seemed a bit cruel to send down a nice treat, then fill the treat with hooks, to photograph a creature we know nothing about. Pah, what do the Japanese know about marine conservation?

It's still not scientific research. They haven't proved anything new, or even given the community anything new to go on. They've chucked some bait in the water and watched an animal eat it. Huzzah!

This isn't like when fishermen dragged up a coelacanth. There's nothing new whatsoever about saying giant squid live down deep, which is what they're being hailed for.

Is there any particular reason why they couldn't have lowered bait that wasn't covered in hooks?

I'm sure 8 pieces of bait set a few feet apart would have provided ample film of a giant squid in motion and with no harm done.

The large suckers repeatedly gripped the boat deck - and Dr Kubodera's fingers when he prodded the severed appendage.

"The grip wasn't as strong as I expected; it felt sticky," he explained.

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Cheers, PhD-san, thank God you're here to tell us that.

This story makes me insanely angry, but can't blame the Japanese for it. It was in conjuction with the British, after all.

Japanese butcher whales, and the Chinese chop the fins off endangered sharks and chuck them back in the sea. There, that's what I hate about them.

They can't cover this with the 'scientific research' tag that whalers use. What exactly have they proven?

Giant squids exist - Yup, knew that, corpses get washed up, they've been seen at the surface.

Giant squids live deep - Again, check, been known for a while, seeing as...we can't find them in the shallow. Congratulations, geniuses.

Giant squids can attack - Yup, sperm whales with big tentacle scars helps a tad on that one too.

Scientists got bored and wanted to world to hug them and give them a big old backslap? Sounds about right. I'm off to shoot a shark in the face and photograph it as it dies to prove sharks die.

Boo! I was expecting to see it wrapped around HMS Ark Royal and Sinbad coming to the rescue.

I saw a picture of another giant squid thing - it had an ENORMOUS eye, it was scary.

Unconfirmed rumours suggest that Giant Squid do exist after photographic evidence was provided by Japanese researchers. In the process of attracting the squid to the location of the camera, one tentacle was ripped off and retrieved by the researchers. Sadly this precious evidence was consumed over the course of the next three days. What remains of the raw squid is insubmissable as evidence.

Read the article - it ripped a tentacle off itself trying to escape.

Maybe the hook/bait was a set distance away so that the squid was known to be at least a few meters back (or whatever).

How do they know it was a giant squid and not just a squid that got really close to the camera?