Unidentified Sea Creature Washes Up After Typhoon (China)

[Anconite]

http://www.china.org.cn/english/Life/136739.htm

Picture in Article Link

Early on the morning of July 23, a fisherman from Ningbo City in east China's Zhejiang Province was shocked by the sight of a huge creature lying dead beside the seawall near his home.

Liu, who lives in Yangshashan of Chunxiao Town in Beilun District and who has been a fisherman for over ten years, said “I have never seen such a monster; it was larger than a whale.”

It was first seen by villagers on July 20, according to Mei who breeds fish nearby, and is nearly 12 meters long and weighs around 2 tons, according to district sea and fishery bureau staff.

The animal reportedly has a long thin head and a snout nearly one meter long.

Partly rotten, with its spine exposed, it has been impossible to identify, but has been described as having some hair, and orange stripes across a three to four-meter wide belly. The skull, which alone weighs over 100 kg, and coccyx of the creature have fallen from its body.

Mei said four young people took away a 100 kg piece of the corpse to study and many experts have come to inspect it, but all in vain.

From the degree of putrefaction, the animal may have been dead for a week and beached by Typhoon Haitang several days ago, said Hu from Beilun’s sea and fishery bureau.

He said its overall structure means it’s unlikely to be a fish, but the shape of its head is like a crocodile’s.

Local fishermen have their own ideas about what the animal is and where it came from.

One called Li said it must have lived in the sea, because the skin of its chest is very much like that of many large sea animals, as thick and hard as rubber.

According to another named Wang, it is very like an elephant seal, especially its mouth, and he said he once spotted elephant seals on a journey overseas five years ago.

Many experts said that, being seriously rotten and deprived of lower limbs and tail, the monster is unlikely to be identified or to be made into a specimen.

An expert from Ningbo University's sea creature research center who has not seen the animal said the possibility of it being a huge crocodile was slim, for they usually live in tropical freshwater.

He also doubted that it could be an elephant seal, saying it would be hard to explain how one got to the subtropical East China Sea from polar waters.



(Today Morning Express, translated by Yuan Fang for China.org.cn July 29, 2005)

 

[Seminole10]

From the link"

From the degree of putrefaction, the animal may have been dead for a week

Welll.. certainly that is all the kneejerk naysayers will ever need to adamantly refute whatever conclusions eventually emerge, if any.

 

[Mezzfit]

how come the only picture of this thing is black and white?

PS Hi

 

[Min Bannister]

Looks like a Globster to me. Or in other words a semi-decomposed whale carcass.

 

[ruffready]

(ALSO i FOUND THIS ON THE ABBOVE CREATURE "BLACK AND WHITE PHOTO " HA HA -THAT WASHED UP ) NEW "TRUNKO" WASHES UP ON CHINESE BEACH! July 30, 2005 - China.org has reported that a colossal, unidentified sea monster has washed up on the shores of the fishing village of Yangshashan, following a typhoon. The carcass, which measured approximately 66-feet in length, was first discovered by local villagers on July 20. The partially rotten corpse reportedly has a long thin head, a snout nearly 3-feet long, some hair and orange stripes across a 9 to 12-foot wide belly. This creature's "snout" begs comparison to numerous, unidentified sea creatures which have washed ashore over the past century, most notably, the notorious South African cryptid carcass TRUNKO. A fisherman known only as Liu, was astounded by the sheer size of the beast: “I have never seen such a monster," said Liu. "It was larger than a whale.”
GO HERE FOR LINKS : http://64.207.147.134/newsold.php

 

[oll_lewis]

how come the only picture of this thing is black and white?

PS Hi

presumably the person who took the photo used a black and white film camera and/or the report in the newspaper was in black and white.

I know that in the 80's when a jurnolist came to my primary school to photograph me and my brother because our primary school had a large amount of twins he used black and white film for his photos, probably because the photo wouldn't be printed in colour in the paper and that way it looks better on the page.

I wouldn't expect there to be many cryptozologists in the area interested in sea monsters either that would want to take a picture to circulate around the internet either, outside of the citys internet access is low in china, and the internet is useully used for work purposes. And most profesional zoologists would dismiss it as a decaying whale so not be interested it it, looking at the picture I think it is a decaying whale too.

(ps: hi, welcome to ft )

 

[RainyOcean]

Ok, but even if you've never been particularly interested in cryptzoology, wouldn't you want to take a picture just because it's weird?

 

[zoltan_g]

Those bloody Shoggoths get everywhere don't they?

 

[TVgeek]

Looks like a Globster to me. Or in other words a semi-decomposed whale carcass.

I agree -- don't the DNA analyses usually reveal them to
be whales or sharks (or in this case, perhaps a
whale shark.)

IIRC when cartilage decays it
takes on the appearance of long white hair.
The long necks or snouts come from the soft bits
of the head rotting (or being eaten) away first.

TVgeek
- There is a part of me just HOPING to be wrong!

 

[UsernameHere1]

The description of the body in general and the skull in particular pegs this as a badly decayed whale.