Sea Curiosity Washed Up

Manawatu Times, Volume 62, Issue 42, 19 February 1937, Page 8

Sea Curiosity Washed Up

AUTHORITIES DEEPLY PUZZLED. Per Press Association. AUCKLAND, Last Night. Zoologists are puzzled by the identity of a strange, bulky mass of animal flesh of no particular shape or form, aud presumed to weigh several hundredweight, which was recently washed ashore in Kaipara Harbour inside the south head. The flesh is white and apparently muscular. A large slice examined at the Auckland War Memorial Museum led the authorities to regard it as the head and base of the tentacles of a giant squid deeply embedded in the sand and covered with a coarse type of hair. The mass has a rounded surface. One way it measures 15ft. and another 9ft. It is thought to have been washing aboflt in the sea for a fairly long time and it gives evidence of having been rubbed against the rocks. The general shape of the curiosity was uncovered by a party of museum investigators and a sketch was drawn after which the block of flesh w r as chopped out with a hatchet to be tested at the museum. The flesh was boneless, tough and fibrous and the tissues failed to correspond with those of whale blubber which was the first theory advanced by Mr. A. W. B. Powell, an authority on marine substances and Mr. R. A. Falla, assistant director of the museum. Numerous experiments have been conducted but no definite conclusion has been reached. One observation reveals that the flesh is slow to decomxiose. Time is being allowed for the mass to decay as it is realised that there is little of it that can be preserved. Within a few days a party of zoologists will revisit the scene in an attempt to extract, if it is there, the horny mandible or beak which will establish the identity of a squid iu which there is no other bony part.