The encounter with a live specimen at Catalina was at least the second such incident. Ten years ago, swimmers near the Baja California city of La Paz snorkeled with an 18-foot oarfish briefly before it died. It then was delivered to the local university.
Christine Thacker, assistant curator of fishes at the L.A. County Natural History Museum, says the Catalina find is the facility's third oarfish, but by far the largest, freshest and most complete specimen.
DNA samples may help scientists learn who a specimen's relatives are, "whether it's a tuna, a salmon or a sea monster," Thacker joked.
Perhaps even more mysterious than the oarfish is the giant squid. With its spontaneous color fluctuations and wild mass of tentacles and arms, it may represent the perfect embodiment of the sea monster.
Ancient mariners referred to the giant squid as the kraken, a savage animal much larger than the squid and octopus they had grown accustomed to encountering.
A mollusk that may reach 70 feet in some parts of the world, the giant squid has been the fictional star of such books as Jules Verne's "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" and Peter Benchley's "Beast." A kraken is also featured in "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest."
Verne's 1870 classic -- in which a submarine is engulfed by the tentacles of a giant octopus-like creature -- reportedly was inspired by an incident reported in 1861, involving the crew of a French ship that confronted a giant squid in the mid-Atlantic.
The captain ordered its capture, and cannons were fired and harpoons hurled, but all that could be recovered was what the crew believed to be part of the sea monster's tail.
The discovery Aug. 11 of giant squid appendages, floating near a seamount eight miles east of Santa Cruz Island, was less eventful than that of the oarfish, but no less exciting from a scientific standpoint.
Bennett Salvay, who had been fishing with his son Daniel and nephew Evan, were looking for floating kelp paddies that might be sheltering game fish when they spotted a glistening mass.
From a distance Evan, 14, said it looked like a giant squid, and that proved correct. Salvay, 49, a film and television composer from Tarzana, used a gaff to gather up the thick arms, then pulled the tentacle aboard.
All the while, Salvay said, there was the eerie sense that the rest of the creature might burst forth and give them a fright.
