The fact that one of the ocean’s most legendary creatures—the giant squid, the subject of sailor nightmares and Jules Verne novels—was recently discovered lurking off the coast of Western Australia using nothing more dramatic than a few liters of seawater is subtly humbling. No tentacle sightings. No dramatic video. Just genetic murmurs drifting miles below the surface in chilly, dark water, waiting to be heard by someone with the proper equipment.
The discovery resulted from a study conducted by Curtin University that examined two submarine canyons, Cape Range and Cloates, which are located about 1,200 kilometers north of Perth, close to the Ningaloo coast. Over a thousand water samples were taken from depths of up to 4,510 meters by researchers on board the Schmidt Ocean Institute’s research vessel, R/V Falkor. They discovered 226 species from 11 major animal groups, including marine mammals, rare deep-sea fish, cnidarians, echinoderms, and yes, the giant squid, which was found in six different samples taken from both canyons. This is what the water told them.
Environmental DNA, or eDNA, is the technology underlying all of this. Skin cells, mucus, feces, and pieces of biological material are all continuously shed by animals, and long after the creature has passed away, these traces can still be found in seawater. After gathering the water, scientists sequence any genetic material they discover and compare it to databases of known species. It sounds almost too straightforward for what it accomplishes. The lead author of the study, Dr. Georgia Nester, noted that a single water sample can simultaneously identify hundreds of species. It’s not a modest assertion. The way ocean exploration operates has to be fundamentally rethought.
Prior to this study, there had only been two confirmed sightings of giant squid in Western Australian waters; no physical specimens had been found in more than 25 years. Finding evidence of them now in both canyons indicates that these animals are inhabitants of a world that science hasn’t been paying enough attention to, rather than infrequent visitors to the area. It’s possible that entire squid populations exist in those deep canyons, completely unaffected by our fascination with them.
This is genuinely unsettling in the best way possible because of the bigger picture. The 226 species that were found included creatures that had never been seen in Western Australian waters before, such as a faceless cusk eel, a sleeper shark, and a slender snaggletooth fish. These names sound like they belong in a horror movie, but they actually represent gaps in the scientific record. Even more startlingly, scientists discovered dozens of species that didn’t match anything in the current catalog. The scientists were careful to point out that this does not necessarily indicate the emergence of new species, but it does indicate that the ocean is moving far faster than we can record it.
Reading the study’s results gives the impression that the deep sea has been patient with us, sitting there, fully inhabited and complex, while we persuaded ourselves that we had mapped enough of it to comprehend its fundamentals. They were familiar with the canyons off Ningaloo. Until now, they simply hadn’t been thoroughly examined using the appropriate instruments.
The deep ocean is a hostile environment, which is precisely what makes eDNA so attractive for this type of work. Things are missed by cameras. What nets are supposed to capture is disturbed. Animals that are delicate or move quickly evade all traditional methods of observation. Nearly all of that is avoided by environmental DNA. The record is in the water; scientists only need to read it.
The excitement of discovering a giant squid is only one aspect of the practical implications. The study’s senior author, Associate Professor Zoe Richards, highlighted the increasing strain that resource extraction, fishing, and climate change are placing on deep-sea environments. It is impossible to construct significant marine park protections around species that you are unaware of. This type of survey’s baseline data, which is inexpensive, non-invasive, and scalable, may change how governments and conservation organizations handle marine management in the years to come. As usual, the question of whether that possibility translates into actual policy is different and far more ambiguous.
For the time being, though, it’s worth picturing a massive squid floating through a submarine canyon off the coast of Australia, completely oblivious to the fact that it had just emerged as the face of a scientific discovery. There’s a sense that the ocean isn’t revealing its secrets as much as we’re finally learning how to ask the right questions when you watch a discovery like this one take place.
