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Subject: Another good reason to keep away from that wet stuff ...
From: Peter Fogg (ffive@XXX.XXX)
Date: Fri Jan 17 2003 - 13:18:32 EST
Giant squid attacks boat
January 17 2003
A French yacht taking part in the Jules Verne round-the-world sailing
trophy has been attacked by a giant squid in the mid-Atlantic, its
skipper announced by radio link.
Veteran yachtsman Oliver de Kersauson, at the helm of the trimaran
Geronimo, said the boat was hit by strange vibrations on Sunday, so he
sent a crew member below deck to try to identify what was wrong.
"Suddenly he saw something moving," de Kersauson said. "It was tentacles.
"The squid was pulling really hard, so we put the boat about and when we
came to a stop the tentacles let go. We saw it behind the boat - and it
was enormous. I have been sailing for 40 years, and I have never seen
the like," he said.
Crew member Didier Ragault, who spotted the creature through a port-hole
said "the tentacles were as thick as my arm wearing an oil-skin, and I
immediately thought of the damage it could do.
"When we saw it behind the boat it must have been seven, eight or nine
metres long," he said.
The giant squid, Architeuthis dux, is the world's largest invertebrate
and can reach 18 metres in length, but it is also highly elusive, with
only about 250 sightings officially recorded -- most of them of dead
animals on beaches.
AFP
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2661691.stm
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