A legend of the deep, yet no Giant Squid has ever been tagged, which would allow tracking or filming up-close-and-squidinal Giant Squids doing the Giant Squid Mating Dance or Stomp or Rave or All-Night Poker Games or whatever it is they mysteriously do before their lifespan of an estimated 5 years is over.

Comparison: Galaxillions of Dollars are spent on Galactic travels, both intra- and inter-, but *sigh* hardly any on *sniff* Giant Squids.

Solution: *Remoras surgically implanted with the actual tag* - the sucking disk of a remora consists of a series of ridges and spaces that create a vacuum between the remora and the surface to which it attaches. By sliding backward, the remora can increase the suction, or it can release itself by swimming forward.
In order to increase the likelihood that Remoras would stay with their new host, instead of gravitating off to sharks, turtles or whales, they would have a taste developed for feeding on parasitic copepods found on the host's Giant Squid body while in captivity/breeding before and after surgical implant of tag.
The tag itself would also have a feedback indicator as to exactly what Sea-Critter the Remora is attached to, using presets - presets based on known movements/textures/depths of other Sea-Critters.
Release a large quantity into area suspected to be Giant Squid territory, and if only 1 of 1000 of these Remoras - each with a unique marker - actually stays with a Giant Squid, then not only would the other 999 provide information about other Sea-Critters, but the objective achieved is a greater success than any previous undertaking.
-- thumbwax, Aug 10 2002

Washed ashore - no diary found http://news.nationa...020726_LPsquid.html
Maybe, maybe, maybe is not good enough, I say [thumbwax, Aug 10 2002, last modified Oct 06 2004]

Up Close Giant Squid Mating Dance http://www.giantsquidallstars.com/
[Helium, Aug 12 2002, last modified Oct 06 2004]

See that ship? http://www.occultop...ges/giant_squid.jpg
Haven't seen it since, have you? [thumbwax, Aug 12 2002, last modified Oct 04 2004]

cool squid things http://www.urweltmu.../belemniten_eng.htm
[sappho, Aug 12 2002]

The Oceans: so much to see, so little time... http://www.sprl.umi...phy.html#Topography
[sappho, Aug 12 2002, last modified Oct 06 2004]

Sperm Whales http://www.enchante...es/Spermwhale.shtml
Baked. Giant Squid taggers don't come any bigger than this. [DrBob, Aug 12 2002, last modified Oct 06 2004]

cool squid things http://www.urweltmu.../belemniten_eng.htm
[sappho, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 06 2004]

Ika resuraa (aka The Calamari Wrestler) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0428662/
Like Rocky, only he's a giant squid. [zen_tom, May 25 2006]

tentatively giving this a croissant. I read that squid can swim at 20 knots - thats speed nothing to do with tying themselves up.
-- po, Aug 10 2002


Will you catch it with ten-tackle, or do you have a spray paint that works under water?
-- FarmerJohn, Aug 10 2002


or do you put bells on the tentacles?
-- technobadger, Aug 10 2002


Mental image of giant sea monster with cap backwards, scuttling along furtively with can of spray paint in one tentacle.
-- chud, Aug 10 2002


one of your friends, chud? <g>
-- po, Aug 10 2002


Read the article, and what ideas that evokes. The possession of a fertile female with any number of sperm sacks creates IMO the perfect circumstances for a little cloning work. Crossbreed and raise fast-growing giants to corner the eastern sushi markets!

However, the potential release to the wild of two year old sea-dwelling, beaked, and carnivorous 50-foot nightcrawlers creates in me a near idea shutdown.
-- reensure, Aug 10 2002


That squid was washed up near where I live, I surf on the beaches in the area, not a nice thought that there is a big daddy squid somwhere out there. Give me a tag and I'll swim out into storm bay and tag one of the slippery little devils.
-- Gulherme, Aug 11 2002


<Somber>Here are your tags. Nice knowin' ya - <Innocent>Saaaaaay... can I have your <Sideways Glance>surfboard(s)?</Sideways Glance></Innocent></Somber>
-- thumbwax, Aug 11 2002


You can't tag something you can't find. I think they're just too damn smart to be caught.
-- DrCurry, Aug 11 2002


Bizarre angel factoid: I read recently that all the giant squids in the world weigh more than all the people.
-- angel, Aug 12 2002


DrCurry: You may be right. On the TV I saw a programme where they put octupi through mazes - they learn fast.

I'd love to see a giant squid up close. Croissant.
-- 8th of 7, Aug 12 2002


This really isn't a new idea is it? I'm sure sombody would have thought of tagging a giant squid before now a new idea would be a way to tag a giant squid, this dosent give a soloution to this problem.
-- Gulherme, Aug 12 2002


Solution: Offer rewards for successful Giant Squid taggers. A successful Giant Squid tagger is someone able to capture, tag and release Giant Squids by first hand-jigging at any and all depths they are found, then tagging said quite antagonized Giant Squid with white spaghetti tags - though humongous lasagna tags might be more appropriate. I have an untested theory that they have a taste for pigeon. Ever seen a pigeon swim below a fathom in the Ocean? And live to tell about it? Me neither.
It is up to the tagger (Fishmael) of Giant Squids to offer reward for any successfully recovered arm - which may be rather difficult, as Giant Squid reach as much as 60 feet or more in length. Architeuthis - the giant squid, this awesome dweller of the seas has spawned fear and tales of terror for centuries. The mere mention of the giant squid evokes a spine chilling picture. The squid has eight powerful arms, eyes the size of a human head, two fire hose sized tentacles covered with barbed suckers used to snatch its prey, and a large parrot-like beak, which is not a good thing - Factoid: I was bitten *Ouch!* by a gray parrot less than a weak ago (Congo was angry because I was leaving after a brief visit - honest). This bloodthirsty parrot is no match for a Giant Squid though.
While the world's leaders wail and gnash their teeth about silly things like war, and halfbakers wail and gnash their teeth about things like technical details, the Giant Squid remain untagged, and continue their secret plan to dominate the Earth, and the pigeons avoid the feeding grounds...
-- thumbwax, Aug 12 2002


Send down a flock of tagged pigeons. The tags would swell up in the stomach acid and not pass through to Davey Jones' loo .
-- FarmerJohn, Aug 12 2002


y'see, I'm not sure about this. I'm a giant squid sceptic. [Meaning, I am sceptical about giant squid, not a squid sceptic who is giant.] They may be very large, they may live for a very long time at great depths of the ocean, but then they die, and if they are the descendants of the belemnites (see link for cool squiddy thing) they should leave the long hard part of their bodies lying on the seabed - thus we should have found giant linear features in seismic and ocean bathymetry surveys. And have we? have we, I ask you? NO! And the reason for that is never mind your giant squid, never mind your spring planktonic blooms so closely related to El Niño/a and on which the entire marine food chain may depend, never mind the primitive life forms living off sulphur at oceanic vents, or x-million-year-old shark teeth providing nucleating sites for precious huge cobalt nodules around polynesian seamounts... yes, forget all that because we haven't even mapped the ocean floor yet. Sure, we know how far it is to Andromeda and we know the strength of the fart we'll feel as some piddling little comet passes a solar system three blocks down the galaxy from us, but do we know where all the bumps and lumps are on the floor of the thing that covers half the surface area of our entire planet? nah! How many people have climbed Everest, eh?, and how many have been to the equivalent depth of the sea? (see link for bimodal distribution curve of Earth elevations).

I tell you, giant squid are not your problem, sir. Ocean mapping is your problem.
I mean, if we'd paid more attention to the world right outside our front door, we might not crash perfectly good Navy destroyers into damnable little Australian rocks, mightn't we not?

and why is this still in Other:General?
-- sappho, Aug 12 2002


I seem to be the only one in the right position to tag a giant squid, MWAHAHAHA THE BOUNTY IS MINE ALLL MINE MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA. So thumbwax how much is this bounty?
-- Gulherme, Aug 12 2002


//So thumbwax how much is this bounty?//
Arm and a leg - perhaps yours.
There's a couple of other Aussie and sworn enemy Kiwi's you'll have to contend with in the 'bakery though.
-- thumbwax, Aug 12 2002


Well according to this article giant squid are as common as mud here, they are even washing up on our beaches and breeding out in storm bay damn I can see storm bay from my house, look there it is right there.
-- Gulherme, Aug 12 2002


Think outside the box, people. Sperm Whales have been tracking Giant Squid forever. Just strap a camera onto one of them and Bob's your Doctor!
-- DrBob, Aug 12 2002


Croissant for "Fishmael"
-- yamahito, Aug 12 2002


Been done dr bob
-- Gulherme, Aug 12 2002


How about thousands and thousands of tiny, cheap, autonomous deep-diving unmanned subs ? They just drift around, and when they see something, they take a picture. Maybe from inside a squid's stomach ...
-- 8th of 7, Aug 12 2002


But tagging these things may harm them - we don't know. thumbwax - here's that sick squid I owe you.
-- PeterSilly, Aug 12 2002


" How about thousands and thousands of tiny, cheap, autonomous deep-diving unmanned subs ? They just drift around, and when they see something, they take a picture. Maybe from inside a squid's stomach ... " <8th of 7> Cheap deep-diving subs? Assuming you could get the government funding, i don't believe they would be cheap. But still a good idea provided they could somehow be paid for. Just think about the possibilities.
-- kittybot, Aug 13 2002


Squids are cool, but as Gultherme correctly notices, tagging them does not make a halfbakery idea. [m-f-d withdrawn, since now we have a tagging mechanism.]
-- jutta, Aug 13 2002


I'd have to disagree with that assessment - it is of general interest to a layman and perhaps would sell a lot of National Geographics, offer a scientist an age-old mystery/riddle to solve, but the niche has never been filled because it seemed to confound even in this day and age. Solution added to idea. It was either that or a "Clapper" attached to 2 separate projectile tentacles.
-- thumbwax, Aug 17 2002


I like the idea of using remoras to find big animals, and so: croissant. Its too bad there is not some way to have a tag that actually shows the animal it is on. Consider tags with mounted cameras and trying to figure out what, exactly, the gnarly huge critter your camera might be mounted on.
-- bungston, Nov 24 2003


Can't we just ask nessie to pop out to sea and have a quick scout-about for us? With her detailed knowledge of hiding-in-watery-places she would be the ideal creature to track down the squid. She could then tell us all the details in a televised world-wide news conference. First task would be to capture nessie then teach her english and train her to do our bidding. Lets get started!
-- dobtabulous, Nov 24 2003


But, Squids don't have tadgers as such?... Oh I see. What a dork (sic), I am.
-- Dub, May 25 2006



random, halfbakery