Real Monsters Found

The ocean keeps validating old legends, and some deep-sea animals are stranger than the myths.

The colossal squid of Antarctic waters is even bulkier than the giant squid. It has rotating hooks on its tentacles and the largest eyes in the animal kingdom, each about the size of a dinner plate to catch faint bioluminescence in the dark.

Then there is the frilled shark, a rare deep-water predator that looks almost prehistoric. Largely unchanged for 80 million years, its 300 backward-curving teeth in 25 rows earned it the nickname the living fossil, a direct link from modern oceans to the age of dinosaurs.