At Boing Boing, “The Kraken Wakes,” my belle-lettristic (yet exhaustively reported) science feature on the first-ever footage of Architeuthis, the giant squid, in its deep-sea element.
Chromatophores flashing from iridescent silver-gold to gunmetal blue, the animal danced in the dark, an emissary from a sunless, starless void. … “The color was utterly different than any of us expected,” Widder told NPR. “The one that had been brought to the surface [by Kubodera]…was red, and a lot of deep-sea squid are red. But this was a spectacular silver and gold. It just looks like it was carved out of metal, it‘s just completely breathtaking.”
(David Zink Yi: Untitled (Architeuthis), 2010. Burnt and glazed clay, approx. 575 x 115 x 29 cm.)