In 2003 Olivier de Kersauson was skipper of a 34-metre
trimaran sailing across the Atlantic when it suddenly came to a juddering halt.
When he looked through a porthole he saw a massive tentacle, thicker than a
human leg, wrapping itself round the boat’s rudder. Fortunately, the owner of
the tentacle soon thought better of the idea and slid off back into the depths
from where it had presumably come. It was estimated that the creature must have
been about 10 metres long.
There have long been stories about giant sea monsters that
could grab hold of large ships and drag them under the waves with the loss of
all their crew. The word “kraken” has been used in many stories and myths to
describe squid-like creatures that were capable of such deeds. Alfred Tennyson
wrote a sonnet in the 1820s with the title “The Kraken”, and that inspired John
Wyndham to write his 1953 science-fiction novel “The Kraken Wakes”, although
his plot involves an invasion of the world by aliens from another planet.
Kraken is a Norwegian word, and early accounts were based on
monsters that lived in the North Atlantic, but stories of this kind are also
told in other parts of the world. In the same year that Olivier de Kersauson
had his heart-stopping moment in the Atlantic, a squid was caught that had
attacked a trawler off Antarctica. This was believed to be a juvenile of the
species Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, a super-squid that can grow to as much as
15 metres (50 feet) in length.
So could this cold water species be the origin of all those
old stories? Maybe!
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