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.

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Inkfish researchers have recently compiled every known sighting worldwide of bigfin squid. The study includes both the sighting in Tonga and another the team made in the Atlantic Ocean. The study reveals a broad distribution across the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian oceans, Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea.

Read the article for free here: Global distribution and depth of the Bigfin squid Magnapinna spp | Marine Biology | Springer Nature Link