FRAGMENT OF FIXED JELLY-FISH FOUND

Southland Times, Issue 23796, 19 April 1939, Page 4

FRAGMENT OF FIXED JELLY-FISH FOUND

HOOKED BY FISHERMAN IN DOUBTFUL SOUND

While fishing near Elizabeth Island in Doubtful Sound during the Easter holidays, Mr A. Helm, one of a party of Invercargill sportsmen, pulled in his line and took a big cod off one hook and a fragment of brittle, bright-pink material that appeared to be coral off another. Although it is a fact that no coral formations exist in New Zealand waters the finder brought the specimen to Invercargill as a curio. The fragment was identified by Mr J. H. Sorensen, director of the Southland Museum, as being the calcareous stock of a fixed jelly-fish, or hydropolyp, often wrongly described as a coral. It was of phylum collenterata, said Mr Sorensen, a tribe that included jelly-fish, sea anemones and corals, and the proper name of the specimen was Stylaster Flabelliformis. Specimens similar to the one found by Mr Helm, although they were not common, had been found in several localities, said Mr Sorensen. The fixed jelly-fish, of which the specimen was a fragment, was fairly big in construction and was found only in deep water. Mr Helm was fishing in approximately 120 feet of water when he hooked the specimen.