IS IT GIANT SQUIB?

Evening Star, Issue 22577, 19 February 1937, Page 13

IS IT GIANT SQUIB?

FIND IN KAIPARA HARBOUR [Per United Press Association.] AUCKLAND, February 18. Zoologists are puzzled by the identity of a strange, bulky mass of animal flesh of no particular shape or form, and presumed to weigh several hundredweight, which was recently washed ashore in Kaipara Harbour inside South Head. The flesh is white and apparently muscular, and a^ large slice examined at the Auckland War Memorial Museum led the authorities to regard it as tho head and base of the tentacles of a giant squid. Deeply embedded iu the sand and covered with a coarse type of hair, the mass has a rounded surface. One way it measures 15ft, and another 9ft. It is thought to have been washing about in the sea for a fairly long time, and it gives evidence of having been rubbed against_ rocks. The general shape of the curiosity was uncovered by a party of museum investigators. A sketch was drawn, after which a block of the flesh was chopped out with a hatchet to be tested at the museum. The flesh was boneless, tough, and fibrous, and the tissues failed to correspond with those of whale blubber, which was the first theory advanced by Mr A. W. B. Powell, an authority on marine substances, and Mr R. A. Falla, assistant director of the museum. Numerous experiments have been conducted, but no definite conclusion has been reached. One observation reveals that the flesh is slow to decompose. Time is being allowed for the mass to decay, as it is realised that there is little of it that can be preserved. Within a few days the party of zoologists will revisit the scene in nil attempt to extract, if it is there, the horny mandible or beak which will establish the identity of the squid, in which there is no other bony part.