ANTARCTIC ROVER

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 309, 30 December 1944, Page 3

ANTARCTIC ROVER

STRAY SEA ELEPHANT

ASHORE NEAR LYTTELTON

CHRISTCHURCH, this day.

Boulder Bay, the bay on the Lyttelton side of Taylor's Mistake, had a visitor from the sub-Antarctic during the Christmas holidays. A bull sea elephant, which had strayed far away from its breeding place on Macquarie Island or Campbell Island, came ashore on the rocks early on the afternoon of Christmas Day. It was in poor condition, and after half an hour went out to sea again, having been inspected by numbers of holiday-makers, and photographed. The director of the Canterbury Museum, Dr. R. A. Falla, said that the sea elephant, which was the largest of the southern seals, usually bred on Macquarie Island, and in recent years had been breeding on Campbell Island. When fully grown it measured up to 18ft in length, and weighed as much as three tons. Any sea elephants seen on the New Zealand coast were all strays from subAntarctic latitudes. They came ashore when in partial moult or during the moulting period. At that time they did not eat very much, and were usually in poor condition, which explained why people who saw them believed that they were sick.