RARE FISH

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 48, 27 February 1939, Page 3

RARE FISH

TARANAKI FINDS

(Special to the "Evening Post.")

WANGANUI, February 25.

| A news item which recently appear* led in the Press tells 'of a rare find by commercial fishermen trawling in. the north, the result being that two specimens of the globe.. fish bhave enhanced the collection at the Auckland War Museum. The item states that they are the first recorded catches in New Zealand waters since 1898. In June, 1938, a fish answering to the description given of the Auckland acquisitions was forwarded to the Alexander Museum at Wanganui from New Plymouth. It was identified va3 Sphaeroides gillbankria, and Was thu3 the second recorded find in New Zealand waters. It is a perfect specimen, . nine inches in length, practically the same size as the first one ever recorded in New Zealand waters, which, strangely enough, was also caught at New Plymouth in 1898. The whole .of the long coastline of Taranaki-Wanganui has proved rich in treasures/and in the early spring especially "a careful watch is kept to see what fresh mystery the sea will leave on the beaches.. The rarest "find" ever recorded in New Zealand is the beaked whale, Tasmacetus shepherdi, which was washed ashore near Hawera in 1933. The new genus of beaked whale is a scientific wonder —and only' the lower" jaw of such a creature had been dis-. covered previously, in Australia. Wanganui thus possesses the only skeleton of its kind in the world. Another "fishy" treasure is the skull of Mezopolon densirostris, the first officially recorded'as having been found in New Zealand. It is also a beaked whale, and only seven specimens had been found up to 1924, and of these seven only two were found in the Pacific, one at, Lord Howe Island and one on the Queensland cbast. ' Possibly the two Mesopolodon grayi found near Waverley in 1932 rank next in Importance, for they are the only specimens ever seen in the flesh. They' were found by a farmer whose property- ran to the beach, and who ofteo made a trip to see what the tide had brought in. The examination of these perfect specimens upset the very best theories published about whales. In the same'locality,'a-rare'shark, the Porbeagle, was found. Wading at Kaitoke, some miles lower down the coast, two schoolboys found a rare deepwater denizen, the Cepola aotea, a little scarlet fish some eighteen inches long.

For his third offence of drunkenness, Samuel James Horton Smith was fined £2, in flefault fourteen days' imprisonment, by Mr. AY. H. Coy, J.P., in i the Mount Cook Police Court today. Two first offenders were convicted and fined - the amount of their bail.