Like a dotcom entrepreneur, M Cousteau was careful to hype his mission to ensure maximum media interest. He worried aloud at the danger that his mini-submarines may be treated as toys by the giant squid. In practice, the derring-do is misplaced. When the explorer Paul du Chaillu returned from Africa with the first specimen of a gorilla seen in the West, he described it as a ferocious beast, given to blood-curdling rages and indiscriminate violence against people. The giant squid, likewise, is no threat to M Cousteau's life and limb.
Nobody knows what it eats, but it is more prey than predator.
It is eaten by the sperm whale, a creature that, Moby Dick notwithstanding, is no threat either. Nor are sailors' tales of ship-drowning squids that wrap their tentacles around masts based on anything but legend. The ones that have reached the surface have all been moribund and helpless. Nor is it even that big. Of the several hundred that have been washed up on shore, recovered from sperm whale stomachs or caught in fishing nets, few have been longer than 30ft, and even fewer were more than 40ft.