Cephalopod size the original tissue samples—together with those of other similar carcasses—showed conclusively that they were all masses of the collagenous matrix of whale blubber (Pierce "et al.", 1995; 2004). Cephalopods of enormous size have featured prominently in fiction (see Garcin & Raynal, 2011; Barrère, 2017). Some of the best known examples include the giant squid from Jules Verne's 1870 novel "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" and its various film adaptations; the giant octopus from the 1955 monster movie "It Came from Beneath the Sea"; and the giant squid from Peter Benchley's 1991 novel "Beast" and the TV film adaptation of
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea not to a "depth", as 20,000 leagues (80,000 km) is nearly twice the circumference of the Earth. The greatest depth mentioned in the book is four leagues. The book uses metric leagues, which are four kilometres each. During the year 1866, ships of several nations spot a mysterious sea monster, which some suggest to be a giant narwhal. The United States government assembles an expedition in New York City to find and destroy the monster. Professor Pierre Aronnax, a French marine biologist and narrator of the story, who happens to be in New York at the time, receives a last-minute