Ironka#57
"Popular press concentrates on the issue of size. There are several ways in which the size of a squid is reported (and misreported or exaggerated). Measured total length relaxed (post mortem), total length when the animal is alive (and outsretched), both including tentacles; estimated length (the one that got away); and weight.
Architeuthis is frequently reported to attain a lotal length of 60 feet. The largest specimen known washed ashore on a New Zealand beach, Lyall Bay (Wellington) in the winter of 1887. It was a female and "in all ways smaller than any of the hitherto-described New Zealand species" (Kirk 1887); it measured 55 feet 2 inches in total length, exaggerated by great lengthening (stretching like rubber bands) of the very slight tentacular arms; its mantle length was 71 inches (1.8 m). A comparable-sized female (ML 1.8 m) measured post mortem and relaxed (by modern standards) would have a total length of ~ 32 feet. "