Morning Robert,
Well you may be in for a BIG surprise. I ran into about 9 of them on a night dive, actually a bounce dive to the net rock on the North end of Danzante Island. This Net rock has an old seiner net about a 1/4 th of a mile long, and over the years the only remaining glass balls that were holding one end of the net up broke away. Anyway that is why I call it the Net rock. The interesting part is that this rock has a small cave that Pacific lobster come to at different times of the year. The downside is the net rock is at 190 feet. Not a big deal just an inconvenient depth for a simple dive to gather these 8 to 10 lb. bugs. There is only a few places I have found over the last 20 plus years I have been diving this area that they come to. Anyway, I did this night dive one night and left my girlfriend on board the boat to wait for me to bring up some of these Pacific´s. As I headed down, getting to about 90 feet, I saw something flash by on my left side. I stopped and turned my light around and saw nothing, so I continued down. At about 150 feet, it happened again, and this time stopped just below the ridge at 150 feet and then all of a sudden, I found myself surrounded by huge Squid. 8 or 9 as I remember. The length of these squid was about 10 feet. I typically don´t get narced until I am below about 190 and it takes awhile to get to me, so I was clear headed at this point. They all seemed curious about my light, as they kept putting their tenticals around my wrist and light and were pulling against me. This only took a few seconds to realize the danger. One of them tried to get a tentical on my mask, and at that point I turned off my dive light, exhaled hoping to drop below them, and did a blitz for the surface. Trust me on this, I was not concerned about my ascent rate at that point. Reaching about 40 feet I spun around and they were gone, I guess they didn´t follow me up, or they could not keep up with me..hee hee.
As a Dive Guide, at times for the rich and shameless, I dive with some of the bad boy sharks, especially out at San Benedicto Island where there is lots of them from big Tigers, Silvertips to Galapagos sharks, (constantly looking behind or as I call it " spin diving) , and never really felt threatened that much ( I carry a bang stick and wear a shark shield). I have not done a night dive off the North end of Danzante Island since...scared, you better believe I was. I really think if I had not acted as fast as I did, they would have parted me out with a few more seconds.........a very lucky guy. Even big sharks (18 foot Tiger comes to mind) don´t shake me up, you kinda know their tricks when they try to come in on you.......As far as the Giant Squid, your chances are 1 in 10 of making it back alive...they are smart and very fast.
Robert are you sure you want to try this?????? Good luck! Terry