Giant squid captured diving into deep sea abyss

A giant squid has been captured on film for the first time in the pitch-black darkness of its natural deep-sea habitat.

The silvery cephalopod was thought to be journeying to the depths of the Pacific ocean in search of the mysterious creature thought to have inspired the myth of the tentacled monster 'kraken'.

Lured out by the bait of a one-metre-long squid, the creature was filmed last July, nearly one kilometre below the surface, in water off the Ogasawara islands, around 620 miles south of Tokyo.

At only three metres long, the squid was quite small by the standard of its rarely-seen species, although scientists believe it measured as long as eight metres before losing two of its long arms. The largest ever caught stretched 18 metres long, tentacles and all.

The amazing footage, shot by Japanese national broadcaster NHK and the Discovery Channel in more than 100 descents, was captured with a small submersible rigged with lights invisible to both human and cephalopod eyes.

Tsunemi Kubodera, a zoologist at Japan's National Museum of Nature and Science who led the team of scientists, hailed the pictures as the "first ever images of a real live giant squid".

Until recently, little was known about the creature believed to be the real face of the mythical kraken, a sea-monster blamed by sailors for sinking ships off Norway in the 18th century.

But for Mr Kubodera, the animal held no such terror.