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A massive squid photobombed scientists who were investigating a sunken shipwreck that caught on fire while carrying passengers nearly ten years ago.
Marine researchers, named the OceanX team, were left stunned after their mission to explore beneath the northern Red Sea was a double success after they discovered a mysterious squid swimming around the large ship.
OceanX sent down a remotely operated vehicle ( ROV ) which quickly identified the shipwreck as the Pella, which was a ferry that went up in flames and sunk in November 2011.
The crew used equipment to visit the boat three times and said that each time the gigantic creature made several cameos, reports Live Science.
After consulting with US zoologist Michael Vecchione, the crew were finally able to identify that the creature was a purpleback flying squid.
"We got photobombed by the giant purpleback," Mattie Rodrigue, science program lead at OceanX, said. "I was joking it was a made-for-TV moment."
The discovery originally took place in October 2020, in the region of Gulf of Aqaba when the group were cataloguing the region's underwater ecosystem.
It was reported that the ship's survey technician alerted Rodrigue that their technology was picking up an item that was around 328 feet (100 meters) long on the seafloor.
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A subsequent investigation confirmed it was the shipwreck that sank while on the way to Nuweiba, Egypt, which left one passenger dead.
Mr Vecchione believes that the creature had a total body length of around 6 feet (2 m) and said that it comes in five sizes, ranging from dwarf form to giant form, which this one likely was.
The purple flying back are active predators that live in the pacific and Indian ocean and can cruise at speeds of 6.2 mph with bursts of up to 22 mph, reports research site SeaLifeBase.
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Science lead Rodrigue said spotting the squid was a "spectacular" moment.
"It was already going to be an exciting day because we were thinking that we were going to see a shipwreck … but we had absolutely no idea that we were going to encounter such a magnificent and large animal," she said.
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- Science
- Animals
- Great White Shark
- Fire
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