New hunt for ‘monster’

Press, 2 August 1977, Page 6

New hunt for ‘monster’

By

KEITH BERRY

Japanese fishermen who netted a “sea monster” with their 2500 t trawler off the Canterbury coast late in April are sticking to their story that it was a monster and not decomposing flesh from a shark or whale as New Zealand scientists say it probably was.

The Japanese press also believes it. I shared a $l9OO helicopter ride with a Wellington photographer,

John Nicholson, and a staff writer of Japan’s largest newspaper, the “Yomiuri Shimbun,” at the week-end to the trawler Zuiyo Maru fishing off Westport. The Japanese journalist, Tsuneo Sugishita, had one specific question to ask the 14 trawlermen: “Were they sure that the remains were not those of a decomposing shark or whale?” The newspaperman said all the trawlermen were adamant that the mystery object brought up in the net 50km off Christchurch on April 25 was not a portion of a shark or whale. They told Mr Sugishita that a portion of the rotting body had a huge “leg-like” flipper and there were signs of a smaller flipper having been attached at the rear of the body. The master of the trawler, Captain Akira Tanaka, and the 13 other men who handled the remains before they were thrown back into the are still all in the vessel. One of the pictures taken by the Wellington photographer was splashed across the front page of seven million copies of the “Yomiuri Shimbun” yesterday. Mr Sugishita was congratulated by his editor

in a telephone call from Tokyo and was told that the display occupied half the front page. There has been speculation by some Japanese marine scientists that the remains were those of a surviving member of the plesiosaurus family, a prehistoric creature' of the deep thought to have been extinct for 60M years. Other scientists maintain

that the remains were nothing more than those of a basking shark or whale. The plesiosaurus is about the same vintage as the prehistoric land monster, the dinosaur, which is still believed by many to have survived in Loch Ness, Scotland.

Sceptics of the plesiosaurus theory have been reminded of the discovery of the prehistoric coelacanth, thought to have been extinct for millions of years but found off the coast of Africa after the war. Several coelacanths have since been netted in deep trawling runs e'tewhere in the world. Mr Sugishita said that there was terrific interest in Japan in the story of the monster off New Zealand. He is a specialist writer on Japanese fishing for the “Yomiuri Shimbun.” He left Tokyo at short notice last Thursday to try to find out more about the “monster.” He said that chartering a helicopter and visiting the Zuiyo Maru was the obvious follow-up in New Zealand.

The Zuiyo Maru’s owner, one of Japan’s major fish-

ing companies, the Taiyo Gyogo Company, instructed the master to co-operate with the newspaperman, who was winched aboard from the helicopter.

The interest of marine scientists in the possibility of the creature being related to the plesiosaurus has heightened in Japan since the publication of a sketch made in the daily diary of the trawler 15min

after the remains were thrown overboard. The sketch, by Michihiko Yano, was his impression of how the creature would have looked had the whole body been brought up. He estimated the creature to have been about 10m long, with a small head, long neck, a body and tail, and two sets of flippers, or “paddles,” underneath the body on either side. Mr Sugishita said that the sketch was still in the diary. He had been assured by the crewmen that Mr Yano had sketched the outline on the day the remains were found. They also told him that they had handled the front flipper of the creature. There were remains of a much smaller set of rear flippers.

A New Zealand fisheriesresearch scientist with the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, Mr Adrian Colman, said that he had seen only newspaper photographs of the supposed monster. The picture indicated that the flesh raised in the net had been in an advanced state of decomposition. He was

amused by the description of the sketch by the crewmen and said that it certainly sounded like a plesiosaurus. But this was almost wishful thinking. “Seeing that it last lived 60M years ago, it would be most remarkable if one turned up in New Zealand,” said Mr Colman. Mr Sugishita’s scoop story on the front page of the “Yomiuri Shimbun”

said that the remains were certainly not those of a decomposing shark or whale. They were the remains of a “sea monster.”

At least one other Japanese journalist is in New Zealand and a three-man crew of the Japanese television station N.T.V., arrived in Christchurch yesterday. The crew chartered the 16m Lyttelton fishing boat Ida Marion. The boat is already making her own search for the “monster.” It sailed from Lyttelton at 11 p.m. on Sunday with her regular crew, including her owner, Mr Dick Brown, of Opawa. Mr Brown is believed to be searching an area between 80km and 120 km off the Canterbury coast. The Ida Marion was chartered for a week through the Japanese Embassy in Wellington. She will spend two days trawling with her own gear before returning to Lyttelton tomorrow to pick up the Japanese television crew.

The Japanese crew hopes that, at worst, it will be able to recover the decom-

posing flesh and bones the Zuiyo Maru tossed overboard. The fishing company says that the remains were hauled from the sea floor at the exact position of 43deg 57min south, 173 deg 48min east. They were thrown overboard a few kilometres away in a depth of 242 m at a position that has also been pinpointed. Mr Sugishita said that if the remains were found, they would be returned to

Christchurch for identification and then cratiiM and flown to Japan for'study by the country’s foremost marine scientists.

In Tokyo yesterday, a scientist said that the creature could not have been a shark if the reported measurements were correct.

Professor Fujio Yoshida, of Tokyo Fishery University, said that the 10m creature “has too long a body and neck and too small a head to be a shark.”

However, initial analysis of a specimen from the creature has indicated chemical construction similar to that of a shark. The Taiyo Gyogo Company asked Professor Joshida to analyse a specimen, believed to be part of its fin, which was brought back to Japan. His initial gaschromatography tests showed amino-acid construction similar to that of a shark called Prionace glaucus. Another academic. Professor Tokio Shikama, an authority on prehistoric plants and animals at Yokohama National University, identified the creature as a plesiosaurus.