Comments on: Giant bizarre deep sea fish filmed in Gulf of Mexico

By: Sordes

Sordes — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 13:33:43 +0000

I checked against several sources, including an old book I own (it was published by the NHM Vienna) which only deals with oarfish, including relations to sea serpents. It was stated in the book, that the largest actually known specimens were around 6 m in length (including a preserved specimen in the museum I have seen myself some years ago), and that there was a story about an 8 m long oarfish, but there seems to be no hard facts for this case. The largest preserved oarfish is “only” 7.3 m in length, and it is really huge compared to most of the known specimens, and it is really hard to imagine that this species can grow much larger. Even the often cited 11 m are quite dubious, not to speak about everything above. I found also that there are several wrong informations about the actual size of several specimens. There was for example a really wonderful and very large specimen found at 2007. There are many photos of it, including one which shows many men posing with it. The length was stated to be 9 m. I checked the photo and compared the size of the largest man on the photo with the actual length of the fish, and it turned out that this oarfish was in fact only around 6 m.

By: Sordes

Sordes — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 09:27:21 +0000

This claim of 17 m is really higly dubious. Even the often claimed maximum length of 11 m seems quite obsure, and I have never seen any photos of an oarfish which came only close to this. It seems this is just another among the many big-fish-stories which became popular.

By: c.stark

c.stark — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 15:55:47 +0000

Cryptidsrus,
Architeuthis (The Giant Squid) has been filmed several times. The first time was December 4, 2006 near the Ogasawara Islands 1,000 km south of Tokyo.

By: cryptidsrus

cryptidsrus — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 00:26:24 +0000

MattBille: You have point. HMMMMMMMMMMMMM.

By: MattBille

MattBille — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 21:03:54 +0000

I wonder what individual this source is citing as 17m long. I thought thought the verified record for an oarfish was about 8m, although sightings of fish in the 17 range have been claimed.

By: cryptidsrus

cryptidsrus — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 18:05:32 +0000

Weird, wondrous critter.

Reminds me of the stuff Cousteau used to film back in the day when he would go in to the deepest reaches of the Ocean and film critters no one had ever seen before.

What woud REALLY rock would be if a GIANT SQUID were filmed.