5000LB "CATCH."

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 303, 23 December 1933, Page 11

5000LB "CATCH."

MONSTER SEA BAT.

BOAT TOWED FOR HOURS,

A four-hour fight with what is described as a monster sea bat, weighing 50001b—a species looking like an enormous flat fish with huge"fins resembling wingH—gave a Karachi angler a thrilling and dangerous experience. The angler, Mr. N. A. Tombazi. told the "Daily Mail" that he was fishing off Cape ilonze, 20 miles from Karachi, with a crew of six natives in a threeton bunda boat, When the vessel tilted as if it had been hit by a tidal wave. Then it started moving on an erratic course at a speed of about five knots. For half an hour the vessel did jazz patterns over the Arabian Sea. Then at the end of the 30-fathoms anchor cable and about 30yds from the craft appeared the monster sea bat (the sea devil of the films), Apparently inextricably entangled in the cable. Tile crew attempted to haul it, but when the sea bat was 20yds from the vessel it started another frantic journey, towing the boat on a nightmare course, frequently bringing it witliin an ace of foundering. After two hours t 1 j monster became exhausted, and the boat's crew were able to plunge two harpoons into it. Then for another 30 minutes the painstricken creature plunged about tile sea, taking the boat with it. Eventually, after more harpoons had hit it, one of the crew dived Under* iicath the monster and stabbed it to death with a Gurklia knife. Seven and a half hours after it had first struck the aiichOr cable the sea bat was beached. It was 22ft from wing tip to wing tip, 21ft from head to tail> and 4ft across the mouth. It Was fciUlltl that it had tied a reef kflot in the aiichor cable round its tail, and each movement merely tightened the knot.