Great ‘plessie’ hunt joined by Japanese

Press, 4 August 1977, Page 6

Great ‘plessie’ hunt joined by Japanese

The great “plessie” hunt came to Lyttelton yesterday where Japanese reporters joined a port trawler in the hope of dredging up the “seamonster’s” abandoned carcase.

Since Monday the 52ft Ida Marion has been making sweeps of a 20 sq. mile area between the edge of the continental shelf and the Mernoo Bank — between 50 and 75 miles off Banks Peninsula. The Ida Marion, skippered by Mr R. Brown, of Opawa, returned empty-handed at 7 a.m. yesterday, picked up the Japanese news-team, and returned to the search area. Mr Brown said he had been trawling in between 150 and 200 fathoms — but the net brought up scarcely a fish, let alone a plesiosaur. “The place has been fished out,” he said. Asked the likelihood of the remains being that of a reptilian sea monster, he said he was “95 per cent sure it was a whale.” “Otherwise it would almost

surely have been spotted — there is a lot of shipping floating around out there.” “But,” he said, waving at a collection of colour prints taken aboard the Zuivo Maru, “when you see these it makes you think.”

The “monster” first surfaced in the Zuiyo Mara’s trawl net in April. It had been dead a month then, and so Mr Brown is doubtful if there is anything retrievable left now. On board the Ida Marion yesterday was the Japanese journalist, Tsuneo Sugishita, the man who scooped the Japanese mass-circulation dailies earlier this week with the first interview with the skipper and crew of the trawler Zuiyo Maru. Mr Sugishita, with an “Evening Post” photographer, John Nicholson, were winched from a helicopter on to the Zuiyo Maru’s deck during the weekend. With him yesterday were a television documentary team of four from Yomiuri Shim-

bun’s broadcasting service, Nippon Television. Mr Sugishita hedged his bets about the monster’s true • identity — “1 think there is a 50-50 chance it is a plesiosaur,” he said.

The Ida Marion was chartered for a week “but we can stay out there as long as we like,” said Mr Brown. Seas in the search area have been moderate with a 10-knot to 15-knot southerly blowing, said Mr Brown. Seasickness might be a problem, he said.

A Waikanae man said yesterday that he had seen a sea monster with a big head and tapering neck in Tory Channel, almost 40 years ago, reports the Press Association.

It surfaced 300 yards from him in daylight, Mr Bernard Ludlow said.

Mr Ludlow’s experience, which happened when he was fishing with his two brothers, Was recalled after a report of a similar experience by Mr Theo Hazelwood, of Wellington. “My father had a property in the Marlborough Sounds called Te Pangu and we were fishing opposite, about a mile and a half on the other side, near Clay point,” said Mr Ludlow. “The monster surfaced about 300 yards from us in the middle of the channel. “It had a big head, and we estimated it was about 30ft long. It had a tapering neck. We estimated it to be dark grey in colour,” said Mr Ludlow.

“We told many people, but they always laughed. They didn’t believe us.”

The other man to report a monster sighting. Mr Hazelwood, said it occurred when he was fishing with his father and an uncle near Pencarrow lighthouse when he was a boy. “I believe the creature was probably a plesiosaurus,” he said.

Christchurch couple tell of sighting, Page 19.