It’s a colossal find.

Australian scientists detected signs of a super-rare giant squid during a watershed study, marking the first time the species had been recorded in the area in a quarter century. They detailed their one-of-a-kind find in a study in the journal Environmental DNA.

“Finding evidence of a giant squid really captures people’s imagination,” said head author Dr Georgia Nester of Minderoo OceanOmics Centre at the University of Western Australia, Oceanographic magazine reported.

Indeed, few living creatures boast the same cache as this colossal calamari, which is capable of growing up to lengths of 43 feet long — longer than a school bus. Meanwhile, its pizza-sized peepers are the largest of any creature on Earth.

Despite its jumbo size, the giant squid is rarely caught on camera due to its elusive nature and the fact that the animal resides in the ocean’s twilight zone at depths of up to 2,000 feet down.

Thankfully, the Australian team was able to capture the next best thing: environmental DNA evidence (eDNA), the genetic debris shed invisibly by animals into the surrounding waters.

They were reportedly surveying the 15,000-foot-deep submarine canyons off Western Australia’s Nyinggulu (Ningaloo) coast when they uncovered eDNA traces of the mythical mollusks.

This marked the first sighting of this big sucker in Western Australian waters in over 25 years. “This is the first record of a giant squid detected off Western Australia’s coast using eDNA protocols and the northernmost record of A. dux in the eastern Indian Ocean,” said Dr Lisa Kirkendale, Head of Aquatic Zoology and Curator of Mollusks at the WA Museum, who wasn’t involved in the study.

These were just some of over 1,000 samples collected during the excursion, which was conducted aboard Schmidt Ocean Institute’s research vessel Falkor.

All told, the team picked up signs of 226 species, including megafauna such as Cuvier’s Beaked whale and the pygmy sperm whale, as well as some critters that had never previously been recorded in Western Australian waters.

These include the sleeper shark, the faceless cusk eel, the slender snaggletooth, and some species that could be completely new to science.

“There is a vast amount of deep-sea biodiversity we’re only just beginning to uncover,” exclaimed Nester.

In fact, a live giant squid wasn’t caught on camera until 2004, and has been recorded only a handful of times since, despite numerous sightings of dead or dying specimens in the shallows or washed ashore.

Coincidentally, the giant squid isn’t the largest invertebrate in the world; that honor goes to the colossal squid, which can grow to over 1,100 pounds.

In 2025, a juvenile was filmed swimming near the Sandwich Islands, marking the first time the species had been caught on camera in its natural habitat.

“This is the first confirmed footage of the colossal squid at home in the deep sea,” exclaimed Kat Bolstad, a squid researcher at the Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand who verified the footage. “This is honestly one of the most exciting observations we’ve had.”