[originaltext] Welcome to the New Bedford institute’s, series of lectures on

Welcome to the New Bedford institute’s, series of lectures on the mysteries of the sea. You may have noticed the drawing on the cover of the program for today’s presentation. It depicts a sea creature that scientists have been interested in for many years.(20)It is said that in the 19th century a group of fishermen were surprised by seeing a huge squid that, they said, was as big as a house and had enormous tentacles. The fishermen were frightened out of their wits according to reports from that time. The creature sank back into the o-cean and was never seen again. Marine biologists believed that this species of giant squid called ar-chituth still exits.(21)And it’s come to represent how little we know about sea creatures, compared with what we know about the animals on the land. We do know that there are many more different kinds of marine species than there are land species. But we just don’t have the technology yet to do sustained research. Even short unmanned trips are so hard to accomplish. In fact, researching in the deep oceans has been compared to flying an airplane overland throwing down a net and seeing what you get. In other words, it’s very hard to picture the whole situation when that’s the way you have to get your samples. Most of what is known about deep sea creatures, which as I said is actually very little, comes from ocean beds that dried up long ago.(22)We’re fortunate to have a few samples of these fossil remains on display on the second floor. We’ll take a look at them after a while.
20. Why were the fishermen frightened of the squid?
21. What does the giant squid symbolize to biologists?
22. Where has most of the information about rare sea creatures been found?