@ossobuco,
Ooops ! I realise now they are talking about the Decapus (not to be confused with the Octopus).
The largest ever seen was by a night duty officer in WWII on board a Liberty Ship. After looking over the side and noticing a huge eye looking back at him, he walked along the ship and estimated it to be the length of the ship 135 m (or 441 ft 6 in, in American metric). Such size has also been confirmed from the days of the whaling stations when it was common to find sperm whales with sucker marks on them made by a comparably large Decapus.
It seems they object to whales eating their young. Those who dine on them, you have lost the moral high ground if you ever go swimming.