Sönke Johnsen chose to study physics at Swarthmore College in the 1980s because it was close to a family friend’s hardware store. That’s just one of many paths that led Johnsen to help capture the first video of a giant squid in U.S. waters, writes Carter Forinash for The Duke Chronicle.

Johnsen’s physics dream was short-lived, as he jumped to mathematics, then, on a dare, biology.

“We each went through the alphabet, and I stopped at B for biology for no good reason,” he said. “We literally dared each other to go to graduate school in a subject from the alphabet.”

In between mathematics and biology, he set up a daycare center, taught kindergarten and first grade, and worked as a carpenter.

Johnsen was a professor of biology at Duke University by the time of the squid sighting this summer.

Johnsen, with a team of researchers around the country, led a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration exploration cruise that brought back the squid footage.

It was not his first time in the spotlight.

He was cited by novelist Michael Crichton as a scientific source for The Lost World, the sequel to Jurassic Park.

Read more about Sönke Johnsen in The Duke Chronicle here.

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