KEY POINTS:
Marine biologist Peter Batson says he plans to try photographing giant squid at a depth of 3000m off the coast of New Zealand.
Mr Batson, who runs a New Zealand company, Explore The Abyss Ltd, with his father, told the Courier-Mail newspaper in Brisbane that he will use a remote-controlled camera to snap the squid.
The first photographs of giant squid -- known as Architeuthis dux -- in the wild were only released last year, by a Japanese team which hooked one and allowed it to dangle in front of a camera for four hours, until it tore off its own tentacle to get free.
A New Zealand squid expert Steve O'Shea, of Auckland, has mounted several fruitless expeditions to film giant squid in the wild.
And a National Geographic magazine team spent months off the Kaikoura coast in 1997 using sophisticated underwater camera gear in an unsuccessful search for the squid.
Two geographically separate groups of squid gather to breed off the West Coast of the South Island in July and August, and off the East Coast in late December, January and February.
"Initially we'll be looking off New Zealand and then South Australia which are giant squid hot spots," Mr Batson said.
Mr Batson, who has a master's degree in marine science from Otago University, was at the opening of an exhibition of his photographs at a Monsters of the Deep exhibit on the Sunshine Coast.
In addition to marine research voyages, he has also participated in expeditions to the wrecks of the Titanic and battleship Bismarck in the North Atlantic as well as diving to underseas volcanoes off Central America.
- NZPA
