The last bask

Press, 16 July 1983, Page 1

The last bask

This gummy beast, washed up on South Brighton beach early yesterday morning, might have looked ferocious, but it was a harmless basking shark.

The shark, measuring 7.2 metres long and weighing about five tonnes, had become tangled in a net set about 4km off the beach by a Sumner fisherman, Mr Warren Mathews, and had been washed up with the high tide.

The shark was still alive when two officers from the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries went to the beach at 11 a.m. However, it was bleeding heavily and Mr T. Haugh said they had to kill it to put it out of its misery. Basking sharks are harmless and, having no teeth, feed mainly on plankton. They are quite common in

New Zealand waters, growing to about nine metres. Fishermen often find them caught in their nets, but are usually able to free them before they come to "*any harm.* However, this was a light net and Mr Haugh said the net’s ties had broken when the shark struggled and the net had

become wrapped round the fish.

The shark caught the attention of residents and their dogs, and two passing police patrols, before it was taken away by staff from the Christchurch City Council’s parks and recreation department, about 3 p.m. for burial. What of Mr Mathews’s net? He says it will cost him about $l5O in materials and a couple of days work to repair it.