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Release the Kraken
A giant marine monster roughly 150 feet (45 meters) long and considered an unidentified species of squid attacked the USS Stein in 1978, damaging a sonar fastened to the ship’s bottom with its claws.
The incident was later documented in the “Sea Creatures and Equipment Damage Problem” report despite the account sounding like fiction, but it wasn’t. It happened.
Sadly, the information that made it into the media was scant. However, a video depicts a section of rubber coating that has been damaged and is covered with tiny holes.
Additionally, it has been said that the rubber included sharp claws that resembled the suction cups of squid tentacles. The squid had larger claws than any squid discovered by science.
A squid with such claws has been said to grow to roughly 150 feet (45 meters), although this is a very flimsy estimate, and official accounts don’t give any indication of the size of the attacking species.
Expert F. G. Wood of the Naval Ocean Systems Center (Naval Electronics Laboratory), Point Lima, San Diego, examined the damage to the NO FOUL rubber coating of sonar equipment.
Sonar domes are covered with a material called NO FOUL, which inhibits the growth of contaminating organisms.
“Approximately 8% of the area of the dome was damaged, resulting in increased sonar noise. Nearly all of the cuts contained remnants of what appeared to be teeth or claws. After examining these ‘claws,’ scientists have concluded that the most likely culprit is a large squid species. Several squid species have rim claws,” the NOSC report said.
“In some squid species, the suckers have been replaced by sharp, curved claws. But none of these claws exceed a fraction of the size of fragments recovered from NO FOUL.
“If the squid was responsible for the damage (and there seems to be no other plausible explanation), then it must be huge and belong to a species hitherto unknown to science.”
Since then, no more information has been revealed; thus, it is still unclear whether it was a giant squid that science had never…
