‘Alien’ sea creature washes ashore
CHRISTCHURCH: A Christchurch resident has been left bemused by a mysterious sea creature washed up on a Canterbury beach.
Her first thought was that it was an alien.
Photos of the bizarre creature show a skeleton with claws on its wings, two long claspers, a long tail, a long head and sharp fangs in its mouth.
Last Saturday, Hanna Mary and her mother were walking along Rakaia Huts collecting rubbish on the beach after a big storm had passed. It was then she came across the bizarrelooking creature.
‘‘First I thought it was a plastic sheeting. I pulled it out from underneath the sticks and it was a bit more than just a piece of plastic.’’
Her mother, who was further down the beach at the time Ms Mary found the strange creature, came rushing over when she heard her daughter scream.
‘‘She dropped whatever she was holding and came running to me.’’
‘‘My first thought was that it was something alien, but I was more fascinated than anything.’’
Initially, they did not want to touch it in case it was poisonous, but Ms Mary’s curiosity gave her courage to take it home.
‘‘I took it all the way home and gave it to a taxidermist next door to see if he knew what it was but he wasn’t too sure either.
‘‘That’s why I thought I should reach out and see if anyone else knew what it is.’’
After the taxidermist had no idea what it was, she turned to her family on Facebook.
‘‘I uploaded the photos on Facebook and we were all taking guesses; most people said skate . . .
‘‘My guess it that it’s some sort of deepsea skate, maybe a Bathyraja abyssicola, that might have been picked up by a trawler.’’
Dr Malcolm Francis, at Niwa, identified the creature as a male Dipturus nasutus, aka a New Zealand rough skate.
‘‘They are called rough skate because they are very prickly — it’s quite common in Canterbury,’’ he said.
‘‘It’s like flat shark; it has a skeleton made out of cartilage. They spend much of their time on the bottom.’’
He says you can tell it is a male because the things that look like legs, which are actually claspers, are used in mating. — NZME