200-pound giant squid found off Matagorda

The 200 pound monster was found dead floating in water 100 miles off Matagorda, according to KTRK.This is only the third time anyone has encountered a giant squid in the Gulf of Mexico. The 200 pound monster was found dead floating in water 100 miles off Matagorda, according to KTRK.This is only the third time anyone has encountered a giant squid in the Gulf of Mexico. Photo: Twitter/KTRK Photo: Twitter/KTRK Image 1 of / 50 Caption Close 200-pound giant squid found off Matagorda 1 / 50 Back to Gallery

A giant squid measuring 10 feet long and weighing 200 pounds was found floating dead in the Gulf Sunday according to reports.

According to KTRK, the enormous creature was found by Michael Belvin, 25, and his friends while they were out fishing about 100 miles off Matagorda.

"It's crazy what's out there in the ocean with you," Belvin told the station, adding that it took him and his friends several minutes to haul the giant onto their boat.

"It's insane. Huge, and pretty cool," Belvin told KTRK.

The giant squid is the world's largest invertebrate but is still largely a mystery, according to National Geographic. They live in very deep water so are very difficult to study.

The largest ever found was almost six times the size of the one caught off the Texas coast, measuring 59 feet long and almost a ton in weight.

It seems that this is only the third giant squid ever found in the Gulf of Mexico. Back in 2009 scientists studying the diet of sperm whales came across the remains of a 20 foot long squid.

"As the trawl net rose out of the water, I could see that we had something big in there — really big," said marine mammal scientist Anthony Martinez at the time. "We knew there was a remote possibility of encountering a giant squid on this cruise, but it was not something we were realistically expecting."

The first reported discovery was in 1954 when remains of a giant squid were found floating near the mouth of the Mississippi River.

In other giant marine creature news, a huge shrimp measuring 18 inches long was caught off the Florida coast last week.