Available wild-caught, these marine cephalopods have smooth, light brownish-pink skin with a purpley-blue stripe running down the tube, 8 shorter arms and 2 longer tentacles. They are found around the southern half of Australia (including Tasmania) on the continental shelf and slope between the surface and 825m, most commonly at 50-200m. They tend to gather near the seabed during the day and spread out at night throughout the water, coming to the surface to feed.
They are mainly caught in Bass Strait and western Victoria by jigging (using lights to attract the squids to the water’s surface at night), and also as a bycatch of trawling between Botany Bay and western Victoria and occasionally as far north as southern Queensland.