The ‘hippopotamus’ of Westshore: Large carcass washed ashore a head-scratcher

The large animal washed ashore at the high-tide mark, north of the Westshore Beach reserve. Photo / Supplied

Is it a monster from the deep, or is it a luckless large farm animal?

Almost certainly the latter.

But when Westshore man Jim Diggle first blinked his eyes at an enormous carcass found on nearby Westshore Beach it sure looked like a hippo.

“It’s a monster” and “bigger than anything I’ve ever seen”, he explained, but he was prepared to accept it was most likely to be a farm animal drowned in recent floods and washed downriver out to sea.

A porcine product of the sea, or a victim of the recent floods? Photo / Supplied

Found about 250m off the northern end of The Esplanade, it was about “eight feet” (2.5m) long, without its apparently-severed head and “would have to be over a tonne”, he estimated. It also appeared “hairless”.

A spokesperson from the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council, also trying to work out what happened to thousands of much smaller sea creatures washed ashore in recent days, conceded, after seeing pictures of the carcass, that was “huge”.

“There have been some interesting discoveries,” she said of the past week of strange things washing up.

Late on Sunday, the spokesperson said the consensus was that it was a cattle carcass, and council’s pollution response team and its works group would co-ordinate removal.

But a new problem had also emerged, the carcass being adjacent to a protected nesting area for New Zealand dotterels.

It means the HBRC requires a “bird survey” before moving the carcass, which “likely” could not be done until Tuesday.