Rare Magnapinna Sighting: Tonga Trench

Kelpie Geoscience Ltd. Director Heather Stewart captured her second, rare deep-sea squid video of the year, this time at a depth of 3,300 m in the Tonga Trench. This is the first sighting of Magnapinna, or the bigfin squid, at the Tonga Trench.

Heather was chief scientist for the third of four research expeditions to the Tonga Trench, leading a team from Kelpie Geoscience Ltd. and the Minderoo-UWA Deep Sea Research Centre. The footage was captured using the Inkfish fleet of free-fall baited cameras. Upon recovering the autonomous vehicles Heather realised that the RV Dagon team had captured footage of this animal, only sighted around a dozen times in its natural habitat previously. Bigfin squids are the only squids known to live at hadal depths.