A giant squid has been found washed up on a beach along the south coast of Wellington in New Zealand.

The sea monster was discovered by three brothers who were planning to head out for a morning swim. Although it has since been collected by scientists for analysis, the brothers took a few pictures and spoke to local media first.

‘My brother said ‘what’s that over there?’ and pointed it out,’ Daniel Aplin told the New Zealand Herald.

Dan Aplin with the giant squid found on a New Zealand beach (Image: Facebook)

‘It was right next to the track so we pulled over and we were like: ‘It’s a big squid’.’


The divers measured it at 4.2 meters long and posted the photos to the Ocean Hunter Spearfishing and Freediving Specialists Facebook page where they racked up over 6,800 shares.



‘It was pretty clean, nothing major on it,’ Aplin said.

New Zealand’s Department of Conservation confirmed that the creature was a giant squid: the largest known cephalopod in the world and, likely, the largest invertebrate ever known to exist.

The Alecton attempts to capture a giant squid off Tenerife in 1861. Illustration from Henry Lee’s Sea Monsters Unmasked, London, 1884. (Image: Wikipedia)

They can range from three to nine meters in length and are so rare that a live one wasn’t captured on video until 2004.

Marine scientists have also speculated on the existence of a species of squid called a ‘colossal squid’ that could measure up to 14 meters and live in the freezing waters around Antarctica.

This specimen found by the three brothers was collected by New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, which is currently examining it.