A couple of people have asked what the smell is like in here – figuring it must smell pretty bad.
Surprisingly the smell is not bad at all. It smells a bit like a clean fish shop. You know there are fishy specimens about but it is a fresh smell.
The speicmens have all been properly frozen so they aren’t rotting – just defrosting. This is the reason that such care is being taken with the thaw process. The large colossal squid is SO big that it needs to be thawed in a cold environment – hence the cold tank -about 6 degrees Celcius. If the guys put it out in the sun then it would start to rot before the inside was thawed. Then it would smell pretty bad.
The giant is starting to give off some more ‘interesting fragrances’ – we do expect them to increase over the next day but it is not too bad.
We expect the giant squid will end up smelling more than the colossal squid because the colossal squid is nonammoniacal. The giant squid contains ammonia in all its tissues for buoyancy.
