For many years, people would hear stories from fishermen about giant squids at sea. According to the stories, an enormous squid would wrap its arms around a whale, causing a terrible fight to start. Whalers said that sometimes, when they caught a whale, it would have scars as big as dinner plates on its body. Other times, when they cut open the stomach of some of their whales, they would find squid arms as long as 30 ft with suckers up to four inches wide. The whalers who told these stories either chopped up the squid parts to eat or use as bait, or they threw them back out to sea before scientists were ever able to examine them. However, in 1861, a French ship was able to bring back parts of a giant squid so scientists could study them.