Mark Schrope writes:

The giant squid has been the stuff of legend for about as long as people have sailed across oceans. Aristotle and Pliny the Elder described what may have been giant squid, which occasionally wash ashore or end up in fishermen’s nets, and the species is thought to be the origin of the Norwegian kraken myth.

Countless groups in past decades have tried to manufacture giant squid encounters, investing millions, getting all the best advice from the experts, only to come back as failed crusaders. One of the other scientists aboard the Alucia, Tsunemi Kubodera of Japan’s National Museum of Nature and Science, has been hunting giant squid in these waters for years. He managed to capture some still images of one giant squid and video of another after it was caught and brought to the surface. But none of that could compare to video of the animal alive in the deep, a view that would finally allow scientists to begin to understand the mysterious animal.

The expedition has not released expense figures, but it must have cost millions. When Chung, a graduate student at the University of Queensland, brought Widder into the lab and started fast-forwarding through the video, the scientists were already a week into a six-week expedition with nothing significant to show. Producer-types were growing tense.

As Chung skipped through footage, Widder finally saw it. The tips of three huge tentacles creeped up out of the lower right corner of the screen, then undulated in front of the camera and showed off impressive rows of suckers. “I was just blown away,” says Widder, “I must have said, ‘Oh, my God!’ about five times.” She didn’t fully trust that they had “captured” a giant until Steve O’Shea, a marine biologist from New Zealand, and Kubodera confirmed it was, in fact, the elusive Architeuthis dux. On the Discovery documentary you see Kubodera’s face light up, then, “Oh, you’ve done it.” Widder yells, “Yes!”

Click through to watch the video...

Premieres January 27, 2013 at 8pm eastern time on the Discovery Channel.