Monster of the Deep

How the world’s largest squid was caught—and
the bidding war for the exclusive footage
slated to be shown this spring.

March 07, 2007 - John Bennett is used to the monotony.
As captain of a New Zealand commercial fishing boat,
he’s accustomed to spending months at a time afloat
in the Antarctic Ocean, staring at—well, nothing.
“Just ice really, lots and lots of ice,” says Bennett.
“Sometimes, not even a seabird.” On a particularly
calm day in late January, Bennett was tending
to his deep-sea fishing lines—each one
2,000 meters long (nearly a mile and a quarter),
and sporting up to 10,000 baited hooks—in
hopes of a major toothfish haul. Suddenly, the calm was
shattered—by the sight of a colossal squid surfacing
near the stern. The beast, a 33-foot-long
adult male weighing half a ton, had wrapped itself
around one of Bennett’s lines.
“It was just this great big brown shape,”
recalls Bennett, who was watching from the bridge.
“It came up right alongside us.
Everyone was yelling and screaming.”