whale Whales are a widely distributed and diverse group of fully aquatic placental marine mammals. As an informal and colloquial grouping, they correspond to large members of the infraorder Cetacea, i.e. all cetaceans apart from dolphins and ...

carcass, initially unidentified due to decomposition, was found washed ashore at

Muriwai Muriwai, also called Muriwai Beach, is a coastal community on the west coast of the Auckland Region in the North Island of New Zealand. The black-sand surf beach and surrounding area is a popular recreational area for Aucklanders. The Muriwai R ...

Beach, 42 kilometres from the centre of

Auckland Auckland (pronounced ) ( mi, Tāmaki Makaurau) is a large metropolitan city in the North Island of New Zealand. The List of New Zealand urban areas by population, most populous urban area in the country and the List of cities in Oceania by po ...

in New Zealand, in March 1965. At some point in time it was dubbed a ''"

globster A globster or blob is an unidentified organic mass that washes up on the shoreline of an ocean or other body of water. A globster is distinguished from a normal beached carcass by being hard to identify, at least by initial untrained observers, ...

"'', after the

Tasmanian Globster The Tasmanian Globster was a large unidentified carcass that washed ashore north of Interview River in western Tasmania, in August 1960. It measured by and was estimated to weigh between 5 and 10 tons. The mass lacked eyes and in place of a mo ...

, a whale carcass found in Australia a few years earlier.

Contemporary reports

The ''

Auckland Star The ''Auckland Star'' was an evening daily newspaper published in Auckland, New Zealand, from 24 March 1870 to 16 August 1991. Survived by its Sunday edition, the ''Sunday Star'', part of its name endures in ''The Sunday Star-Times'', created in ...

'' reported the find on its front page of 23 March 1965. At that time the carcass was long. It had a tough 1/4 inch thick hide, under which was a thin layer of what appeared to be fat, then solid meat. It was covered in what appeared to be "sand-matted grey hair four to six inches long". A Marine Department officer who had seen it more than a week earlier, said it had then been long by about . The carcass was 15 miles from the southern end of the beach, and the article included two photographs of it. Shown photographs, John Morton, head of the zoology department at the

University of Auckland , mottoeng = By natural ability and hard work , established = 1883; years ago , endowment = NZD $293 million (31 December 2021) , budget = NZD $1.281 billion (31 December 2021) , chancellor = Cecilia Tarrant , vice_chancellor = Dawn F ...

, said, "You can rule out whales because of the hair, and you can rule out sea elephants and sea cows because of its size. I can't think of anything it resembles." The article said that theories on the object ranged from "a sea monster" to "an unusual elephant which had died at sea", without indicating who raised these theories. The following day, 24 March 1965, the ''Auckland Star'' reported that "Laboratory tests by Auckland University zoology specialists on parts of the 'hairy' mass washed up on Muriwai Beach today identified it as the 'very decomposed' remains of a whale." Senior students had visited the carcass the previous evening and cut a sizeable chunk from it. "Senior zoology lecturer Miss J. Robb said today the skin and most of the blubber had been scoured or eaten off the huge mound of flesh, leaving a fibrous tissue which had been so uniformly shredded it looked like hair. 'We are positive of our identification,' said Miss Robb. 'It is a very dead, very smelly whale.'" Neither article in the ''Auckland Star'' mentioned the term "globster".

Later discussion

Marine biologist Richard Ellis's 1994 book ''Monsters of the Sea'' mentioned the "New Zealand globster", noting that "Greenwell (1988) reproduced a couple of photographs of the New Zealand globster, but they are without specific identification or credit". Ellis himself reproduced one of the photographs, with the credit saying "Photo courtesy of Richard Greenwell and Sidney K. Pierce".Ellis 1994, p. 429. The photograph is one of the two published in the ''Auckland Star'' on 23 March 1965.

References

{{Globsters Globsters 1965 in New Zealand Fauna of New Zealand March 1965 events in New Zealand