A GREAT SEA FIGHT.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 442, 17 November 1908, Page 2

A GREAT SEA FIGHT.

Swordfish v. Whale.

Awe-Inspiring Spectacle.

Although great battles are fought t.9“-§r fifijsh at sea between, rim

monsters of the deep, it is not^ 1 often that man is privileged to watch the contests. On Wednesday morning the fishing boat Daisy was between Ponui Island and Coromandel, when the crew sighted what appeared at first toNy. be the surface effect of a submarine T? disturbance. The water was being splashed in all directions, and then through the spray the dark body of a whale was seen making all haste to the spot. The men on the Daisy saw a big cow whale which had been haunting the Gulf waters for some considerable time, accompanied by her calf, engaged in a fight with an enormous swordfish. M. D. Simtnonds, who was on the Daisy, to-day related the story of the fight. He said it wa? a magnificent and awe inspiring spectacle to watch the great cow whale fighting for her life, but more particularly for her calf. The whale’s weapon of offence is the enormous tail, and the leviathan was plunging and striking in all directions in her endeavors to disable her cunning foe. Occasionally the flukes of the swordfish were seen as he rose from a dive, his game evidently being to strike the whale beneath with his powerful sword, but the bigger fish circled round and sent up columns of water so that the assailant was unable to secure a good v opportunity for a thrust. Over a quarter of an hour after the arrival of the boat, the fight raged, and then after a fruitless dive the swordfish came up close and made a thrust at the calf, but instead received a crushing blow from the mother whale’s enormous flukes across the middle of his back. That blow, delivered with many tons of energy behind it, settled the swordfish. The swordfish was stunned and apparently partially paralysed by the blow from the whale, and he was killed and hauled on board without much difficulty, while the whale and her calf went off towards Coromandel with triumphant splashing and plunging. The swordfish was brought to Auckland and placed iu the freezing chambers at the Auckland Farmers’ Freezing Company’s works, where a number of interested people assembled to see it. The fish from tail to the tip of the sword was 12ft 6in in length, and the sword itself was 4ft long. The girth at the middle of the body was 4ft 6in, and, put on the scales, the huge carcase weighed just on 6cwt.