Plenty of beach-goers worry about seeing sharks in the ocean, but what would you do if you saw a 14-foot squid floating nearby? If it doesn't have a dorsal fin it doesn't count, right?
When brothers Daniel, Jack and Matthew Aplin were driving near the Red Rocks area of Wellington, New Zealand over the weekend, they were looking for a good place to dive. What they found instead was a 14-foot, nine-inch squid washed ashore.
"My brother said 'What's that over there?' and pointed it out," Daniel Aplin told Newstalk ZB. "It was right next to the track so we pulled over and we were like: 'It's a big squid.'"
Upon initial inspection, the Department of Conservation said that this is likely a giant squid, not a colossal like the one caught in Antarctica in 2007 (now preserved and on display at the Te Papa museum in NZ). What's the difference, you ask? Well, although giant squids are typically longer, colossal squids have larger, heavier bodies than giants. The average giant squid weighs around 600 pounds, while the Te Papa colossal squid weighs over 1,000 pounds.
"That’s a whole heap of calamari," one person commented on Facebook. Great, now I'm hungry.