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A 1977 trawler hauled up a carcass that Japan took for a sea monster

Ellsworth Toohey
Jun 12, 2026
∙ Paid

Basking sharks by candiche / CC BY 2.0 (via Openverse)

In April 1977 the Japanese trawler Zuiyō Maru, fishing east of Christchurch, New Zealand, pulled up a decomposing carcass about 10 meters long. The Zuiyo-maru carcass had “a 1.5-m-long neck, four large, reddish fins, and a tail about 2.0 m long,” and its appearance “resulted in speculation that it mi…

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