Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,

His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep

The Kraken sleepeth" - Alfred Lord Tennyson

That's right.

It's time to release the kraken!

This is the legendary sea monster.

It's massive,

terrifying,

and hungry.

Thankfully, it's just a myth…

right?

What if this behemoth of the sea

actually existed?

It's time to dive in.

We're getting up close and personal

with the mythical cephalopod feared by

ocean dwellers and land lovers alike,

The Kraken!

First, we would categorize the kraken

as a cephalopod.

Like the octopus, squid and cuttlefish,

the kraken would be a highly advanced

and intelligent marine animal.

Cephalopods are soft-bodied,

so they have no bones to become fossils.

This would explain why we haven't found any

remains of a kraken,

but it also proposes a terrifying possibility.

If the kraken lived by the laws of science,

it wouldn't immortal.

Which means there's more than one,

and they're breeding.

Baby krakens!

As to where this is happening,

we assume it would remain

in the North Atlantic Ocean.

That being said,

the species of giant squids alive today

inhabit all of the world's oceans.

So we shouldn't consider ourselves

to be safe yet.

Your first hint that you may be

in the presence of a kraken

is that you catch lots of fish.

And I mean, A LOT of fish.

If it seems too good to be true,

that's because it is.

The kraken is scaring the fish

towards the surface.

And that's a harbinger of death

for unwary sailors.

Giant squids hunt by

keeping still in deep waters.

When a fish gets close enough

to the dangling tentacles,

it's pulled into the squid's grasp,

and is unable to escape the suction cups

that line the tentacles.

We can assume the kraken

hunts in a similar style,

but fish isn't on its menu.

It wants you,

your crew and your ship.

The Kraken is described in folklore

as being about the size of a few small islands,

and its back was 1,500 meters (4,921 feet) in circumference.

It's also said that the kraken

was able to pull massive ships

completely underwater with its tentacles.

How strong would it have to be to pull this off?

Well, Archimedes' principle states that

the buoyant force on an object,

submerged in a fluid,

equals the weight of the fluid

that the object displaces.

If you take the gross tonnage of your ship,

and multiply it by the density

of seawater and gravity,

then subtract the weight of the ship,

it will give you the force that the kraken needs

to use to pull your ship under the water.

For the kraken to pull a regular-sized ship

completely underwater,

it would need to exert a force

of just over 400,000 kg (900,000 lbs).

In non-mathematical terms,

the kraken is very, very strong.

And you?

Well, I'm sorry to break this to you.

But you're kraken food.

It's safe to say that if at least one

of these monsters dwelled beneath the ocean,

anything involving sea travel

would have happened very,

very differently.

Well, if this monster of the deep

is lurking in the Atlantic,

it would have changed history as we know it.

The Vikings wouldn't have been able

to sail overseas

if this sea monster was eating them.

Come to think of it,

Christopher Columbus and his crew may have

ended up in a watery grave,

and never made it to the New World.

In fact, North America might not have been

discovered at all

until the invention of air travel.

Now, we could assume that explorers

evaded the kraken on their voyage.

But with the kraken

being such a massive creature,

it would need a lot of food to sustain itself.

Meaning, it doesn't look good for anyone

who likes to go into the water.

Thankfully, the kraken isn't currently

devastating the ocean today.

If it ever existed in the first place,

it would have been gone long before

humans made their debut.

The myths and legends

attributed to the kraken

are more than likely encounters

with their very real,

and arguably very terrifying,

giant squid cousins.

But after all that,

we can't write the old kraken off for sure.

Human beings have only searched

5% of the oceans.

Everything else down there is a mystery.

It may be a creature of myth,

but we can't imagine it would be fun

to be eaten by a kraken,

What if another, real nautical creature

decided to make you it's dinner?

What if you were swallowed by a whale?