TREASURE TROVE

Waipa Post, Volume 44, Issue 3181, 24 May 1932, Page 6

TREASURE TROVE

DISCOVERIES ON N.Z. BEACHES. FASCINATING PASTIME. On the beaches of the world are washed up the flotsam and jetsam of the sea —wood, shells, fish, seaweed. Other things than legitimate seatrove are found, too,*and in many countries people make a regular business of searching the sea beaches for odds and ends. Even little New Zealand has her beaches patrolled, mostly as a labour of love, for the treasure trove is usually given to a nearby museum. The men who keep an eye on a particular bit of beach are usually farmers or fishermen who live in the locality. The fishermen,! of course, are often about the beaches, but many a farmer, whose property runs down to the sea, makes a special trip several times a week to see what the tides have brought. In this way some of the most important discoveries have been made. The general public, too, are often interested enough to report any unusual "find." Early spring is a particularly good time for searching the beaches, most of the treasures coming ashore then. The locality which has, perhaps, yielded the most unusual results is the long stretch down the TaranakiWest Coast of the South Island. Owing to the westerly drift of the tides, these localities have proved far superior to the east coast, both in number and variety of the specimens found. One of the most important natural history specimens found on any coast of New Zealand was obtained about six months ago on the Waverley beach reports a Wanganui correspondent. It was a specimen of the southern beaked whale—Mesoplodon grayi—possibly the only perfect specimen in the world. These whales inhabit southern seas and are never seen. This specimen is perfect to its tiniest joint, even the flippers with five fingers are there. Very few whales of any species on exhibit show the fingers. The find also provided the very first opportunity to get a detailed description, as no specimen of this specie had before been seen in the flesh* It is not a big whale, being only 17ft. long, with a snoutlike beak, snow white in colour, while the rest of it is quite black. It was flensed on the beach, disjointed, and dragged piecemeal up a cliff face, and loaded on to a lorry—a long, disagreeable task. A killer whale was found a year or so ago at Kai Iwi, not many miles from Wanganui. Within recent years four humped-back whales have been found between the Kai Iwi and Turakina rivers. Near the mouth of the Okehu stream, in the same locality, a very rare shark, the Porbeagle, was found. This specimen is recorded as having been found only twice before on a New Zealand beach. Sealions used to be plentiful round the New Zealand coasts. One season about 100 years ago 15,000 skins were shipped away. Now they are very few, and only once during recent years has one'been washed ashore on the Taranaki" coast. Sea leopards from the Antarctic are very occasionally found. A few months ago two schoolboys found on the Kaitoke beach a little fish some 18 inches long, and brilhant scarlet in colour. It was identified as a Cepola aotea, a very rare deepwater denizen. Further down the coast at Otaki some time ago a tuna, or tunny, was washed ashore, one of the three or four ever found on New Zealand beaches, and a rare sei whale was recently found at Paremata. The very largest whale, and the only one of its species washed ashore on our coasts, was a blue whale, which came ashore at Okarito beach, near the Sounds, and is now in the Canterbury Museum. Many inanimate objects wash ashore, some of them most surprising things. Two sixteenth century sundials | undoubtedly Dutch, were actually found on a Taranaki beach some years_ago. Bottles with messages, some of which have drifted long distances, and all kinds of wreckage are fairly common.