King-Sized Calamari

I recently visited Ogasawara, a small group of Japanese islands about 1000km southeast of Tokyo, to photograph sperm whales.

While I was there with fellow photographers Eric Cheng and Douglas Seifert, and videographer Julia Sumerling, we witnessed a sperm whale eating giant squid.

I posted some photos and a brief video explanation about the sperm whales on my blog.

Douglas Seifert and me with king-sized calamari

On a separate day, I retrieved a 351cm segment of a giant squid feeding arm…essentially leftovers from a sperm whale’s meal…in the water. Obviously, this isn’t something that happens every day, so we took lots of photos and donated the segment to local researchers.

But, of course, we had some fun too. Here’s a video of Douglas performing the official measurement of the arm segment:

And this a general trip video I put together about Ogasawara (since I assume most people have no idea where it is). Be sure to play the video all the way to the end, so you can listen to the type of stuff I had to endure:

Note: All photos taken under permit.