In what's believed to be a scientific first, a Japanese research team says it has filmed a live giant squid and suggests the elusive creatures may be more plentiful than believed.

Team leader Tsunemi Kubodera said Friday that they videotaped the giant squid at the surface as they captured it off the Ogasawara Islands south of Tokyo, earlier this month. The squid, which measured about seven metres long, died while it was being caught.

A giant squid attacking a bait squid is pulled up off the Ogasawara Islands, south of Tokyo, on Dec. 4.
(Tsunemi Kubodera, National Science Museum/Associated Press)

"We believe this is the first time anyone has successfully filmed a giant squid that was alive," said Kubodera, a researcher with Japan's National Science Museum. "Now that we know where to find them, we think we can be more successful at studying them in the future."

The squid was caught using a smaller type of squid as bait, and pulled into a research vessel "after putting up quite a fight," Kubodera said.

"It took two people to pull it in, and they lost it once, which might have caused the injuries that killed it," he said.

He said the squid, a female, was not fully grown and was relatively small, by giant squid standards.

"The longest one on record is 18 metres," he said.

Kubodera and his team found the squid on Dec. 4 off the remote island of Chichijima, which is about 960 kilometres southeast of Tokyo. They had been conducting expeditions in the area for about three years before they succeeded in making their first contact two years ago.

Last year, the team succeeded in taking a series of still photos of one of the animals in its natural habitat — also believed to have been a first.

Giant squid, formally called Architeuthis, are the world's largest invertebrates.

Because they live in the depths of the ocean, they have long been wrapped in mystery and embellished in the folklore of sea monsters, appearing in ancient Greek myths or attacking the submarine in Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

Until the successes of Kubodera and his team, most scientific study of the creatures had to rely on partial specimens that had washed ashore dead or dying or had been found in the digestive systems of whales or very large sharks.

Kubodera said whales led his team to the squid.

"Giant squid are a major source of food for sperm whales," he said, so they found an area where whales fed.

He also said that, judging by the number of whales that feed on them, there may be many more giant squid than previously thought.

"Sperm whales need from 500 to 1,000 kilograms of food every day," he said. "There are believed to be 200,000 or so of them, and that would suggest there are quite a few squid for them to be feeding on. I don't think they are in danger of extinction at all."

Having filmed the squid, Kubodera said his next goal is to further study the creatures' habits in their natural surroundings — at a depth of around 650 metres.

But he said he is not planning to try to capture one live.

"It is possible, if you were to go out very well-prepared with a large ship and a large tank," he said. "But we don't have that kind of funding."