{"id":198379,"date":"2025-12-22T17:17:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-22T17:17:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/198379\/"},"modified":"2025-12-22T17:17:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T17:17:12","slug":"ocean-census-researchers-hunt-for-new-deep-sea-antarctic-species","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/198379\/","title":{"rendered":"Ocean Census researcher’s hunt for new deep-sea Antarctic species"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"MichelleMichelle Taylor<\/p>\n

Dr Michelle Taylor’s research team made international headlines when they discovered an elusive colossal squid<\/p>\n

As Dr Michelle Taylor took a moment to breathe in the icy Antarctic air, a stark realisation sunk in. The nearest humans, aside from her immediate colleagues, were hundreds of miles away on the International Space Station. The researcher and her team were on a quest to find undiscovered marine life in one of the most remote places on the planet. What was it like hunting in the deep sea for the unknown?<\/p>\n

University of Essex academic Dr Taylor was in the south Chilean city of Punta Arenas earlier this year when she received a text.<\/p>\n

It was sent by a woman she had met in a pub a few days before, who said she was looking to find an elusive colossal squid.<\/p>\n

This woman, Kat Bolstad, had seen a video shared by Dr Taylor’s team of researchers from their deep sea expedition, which was blowing up on social media.<\/p>\n

“Michelle, people keep tagging me in this video,” she wrote.<\/p>\n

“I’ve taken as good a look as I can and I’m 80% sure you’ve filmed a colossal squid.”<\/p>\n

Not many people outside of scientific circles were aware of Ocean Census’s 35-day quest when the R\/V Falkor set off from Chile in March.<\/p>\n

But Dr Taylor knew filming this squid, so rare that it still straddles the line between legend and reality today, was about to propel her work to the world.<\/p>\n

The discovery made headlines across the globe<\/a>. A colossal squid had not been seen for 100 years, let alone caught on camera.<\/p>\n

The colossal squid was found during an expedition in the south Atlantic Ocean<\/p>\n

“We were just in awe, we couldn’t believe it. This is a world exclusive,” Dr Taylor, who is the head of science at Ocean Census, said.<\/p>\n

“I sent [Kat] the video and she consulted with a few other experts, and they came back and said ‘yeah, pretty sure this is the first ever video footage of the colossal squid’.”<\/p>\n

The 30cm-long (11.8in) juvenile was spotted at a depth of 600m (1,968ft), near the South Sandwich Islands in the south Atlantic Ocean.<\/p>\n

Experts believe colossal squid can grow up to 7m (23ft) in length and weigh up to 500kg (1,100lb) – making them the heaviest invertebrate on the planet.<\/p>\n

Dr Taylor, who is based in Colchester, said: “We think we caught the juvenile by surprise. It was transfixed. <\/p>\n

“It just stayed still and hoped we would go away, which we did. That’s how we came to find the unexpected.”<\/p>\n

\"SuppliedSupplied<\/p>\n

Dr Taylor is an expert in coral taxonomy<\/p>\n

The footage was captured via The Nippon Foundation-Nekton Ocean Census and Schimdt Ocean Institute livestreaming its deep-sea dives, undertaken by a remotely operated vessel.<\/p>\n

However, it was initially missed by coral expert Dr Taylor and her team who thought it was a more common glass squid.<\/p>\n

Enthusiasts watching the livestream at home were instead the ones who realised how significant the find was, and they shared the footage on social media.<\/p>\n

\"SchmidtSchmidt Ocean Institute<\/p>\n

Despite initial confusion, the research team did also film a glass squid for the first time<\/p>\n

“The Schmidt Ocean Institute decided very early on they wanted the world to see what they were finding on their expedition,” Dr Taylor said.<\/p>\n

“They beam the video footage live from the deep sea. That was something extremely special about this whole experience.<\/p>\n

“I’ve been to sea on eight, nine expeditions – ten maybe – and this is the first time my family has been able to watch exactly what I’m doing, live on YouTube.”<\/p>\n

\"SuppliedSupplied<\/p>\n

Dr Taylor said some of the deep-sea discoveries were “extraordinary<\/p>\n

\"SchmidtSchmidt Ocean Institute<\/p>\n

The remotely operated SuBastian vessel was hooked up with a camera to livestream its finds<\/p>\n

Dr Taylor recalled even her neighbour was texting her in amazement at some of the finds the livestream was picking up.<\/p>\n

“That’s just the joy of this, right?,” she said.<\/p>\n

“I can make some predictions about what we’ll find. But not this, this is extraordinary.”<\/p>\n

Other landmark finds included zombie worms, a hydrothermal vent, dragonfish, breeding urchins and a carnivorous “death-ball” sponge<\/a> 2.2 miles (3.5km) deep in a trench.<\/p>\n

At one point the scientists had to take refuge near an active volcano after a huge storm closed in.<\/p>\n

Dr Taylor was asked to lead the odyssey not long after being invited to a New Zealand-based Ocean Census workshop in 2023.<\/p>\n

\"JialingJialing Cai\/The Nippon Foundation-Nekton Ocean Census\/Schmidt Ocean Institute<\/p>\n

The “death-ball” sponge was found in a trench some 3,600m (11,811ft) deep<\/p>\n

It took her team eight days to sail to the remote area they were examining – and the same time to return.<\/p>\n

“It’s one of the most isolated places on the planet,” she said.<\/p>\n

“There were points when we were there and there were no other ships around that the closest people to us were on the International Space Station.<\/p>\n

“It’s a really unusual feeling,” she added. <\/p>\n

\"JialingJialing Cai\/The Nippon Foundation-Nekton Ocean Census\/Schmidt Ocean Institute<\/p>\n

A previously unknown species of sea star found at 3,631ft (1,107m) at the Mystery Ridge dive site<\/p>\n

Dr Taylor hopes the volume of biological discoveries her researchers made will inspire others to explore the world’s most untapped corners.<\/p>\n

They collected almost 2,000 specimens across 14 animal groups, alongside thousands of high-definition images and hours of video.<\/p>\n

“It gives me hope because we came across relatively unimpacted ecosystems, and there are some of them still out there,” Dr Taylor added.<\/p>\n

“Climate change is impacting every single inch of our ocean, so it was magical to be in an area that has little human impact.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michelle Taylor Dr Michelle Taylor’s research team made international headlines when they discovered an elusive colossal squid As…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198380,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[85,46,141,386],"class_list":{"0":"post-198379","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198379\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}