New Plans To Catch Giant Squid In Cook Strait Deeps

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28100, 16 October 1956, Page 10

New Plans To Catch Giant Squid In Cook Strait Deeps

"The Press” Special Service

WELLINGTON, October 14. Renewed attempts to catch a giant squid in the Cook Strait deeps will be made in a month’s time, depending on favourable weather, by the zoology department of Victoria University College. The equipment, including the large squid trap, is all ready for the expedition to begin. On an earlier expedition last summer a trap patiently made by the staff of the department was lost when being lowered from a launch into Cook Strait for the first time. The wire hawser attached to the trap jumped from a block runner, became jammed and broke. Local and world-wide interest was created by the department’s intention of capturing a giant squid, and the disconsolate party was given new heart cn returning to Wellington

when presented with several offers from city firms to provide the materials for a new trap. This trap is complete and measures have been taken to see that an accident similar to the first does not occur. The expedition will wait until the weather is reliable enough to depend on two to three days’ uninterrupted operations. The trap will be lowered 300 fathoms, or 1800 feet. Professor L. R. Richardson, head of the department said that while waiting for suitable weather an expedition hoped to obtain a launch to go out into Cook Strait for line and net fishing. Early this vear a team from the department, led by Professor Richardson achieved the deepest set-line fishing in Australia or New Zealand and, possibly, the world when it twice lowered a quarter-inch hemp line, heavily weighted with 50 baited hooks. 7200 feet into Cook Strait. The first attempt achieved nothing; the second brought to the surface creatures never before seen by man.