That 19th century tale of adventure on the high seas is about to be challenged by a 21st century adventure beneath them, when the son of a legend sets sail from Port Moresby to chase the shadow of a myth.
The son of a legend is 61-year-old Jean-Michel Cousteau, who is due to leave Port Moresby on October 1 on an expedition which would do his late famous father, Jacques, proud.
The myth Cousteau is chasing is the "kraken", a giant squid with eyes the size of soccer balls, a beak which can tear through bone and wood — and a reputation almost as big as its one-tonne, tentacled frame.
Moby Dick author Herman Melville immortalised the mysterious creature when he wrote about a duel-to-the-death between a squid and a sperm whale in his 1851 classic.
In reality, little is known about the world's largest invertebrate.
Although carcasses have been found tangled in fishing nets, washed up on various beaches and half-digested in the stomachs of sperm whales — the only known predator of the squid — it has never been seen alive.
That is because the giant squid, dubbed the "kraken" by the ancient Greeks, spends most of its life in cold darkness thousands of metres beneath the ocean waves.
But that was before Deep Ocean Odyssey, the adventure-exploration company co-founded by Cousteau, sponsored the development of the Deep Rover, a revolutionary, clear bubble of a craft which its designers say can dive deeper, stay down longer, and manoeuvre more freely than any other conventional submarine.
Deep Ocean Odyssey now has two Deep Rovers, worth more than a $1 million each, ready to carry its scientists and cameraman deep into the Kaikoura Canyon off the east coast of New Zealand in pursuit of what the Cousteau-led team calls the "giant calamari".
Teeming with marine life, Kaikoura is known to be a veritable McDonald's drive-through for pods of sperm whales — presumably hunting giant squid.
The Cousteau team plans to follow the sperm whales 650m into the canyon, where they will load up the Deep Rover's arms with fresh bait, switch off their engines and lights and simply wait.
No one is sure what will happen if and when a squid fixes its dinner plate-sized eye on two human beings sitting in a transparent bubble.
What is known is that it can move at lightning speed, has the ability to change colours in the blink of an eye and — judging by the wounds left on the carcasses of whales it has bested in hostile encounters — has remarkable strength in its eight arms, all of which are lined with toothed suckers.
"I'm not sure I want to be in a sub if he takes it and decides to keep it as a toy," Cousteau confessed wryly at a media briefing in New York.
Hunt for Undersea Giant Kraken Underway
Moby Dick, move over.
[Original headline: Kraken hunters not the full squid ]
The Courier-Mail / Australia | By Christine Jackman - April 29 2000
