Hunting Ocean Vampires.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVI, Issue 110, 13 May 1904, Page 4

Hunting Ocean Vampires.

an exciting sport. With.the possible exception of the basking shark, the " Sea Devil," or Oqoan Vampire," is the largest of all the monsters of the deep. An unborn ocean vampire, taken from the mother, preserved at the British Museum, is sft broad, and before mountiog weighed 20H>. The mother measured some 15ft in length and quite as much in breadth.

It is at all times a dangerous undertaking to attempt to capture one of these monsters, but particularly so in the case of a mother accompanied by her offspring. She is quite capable of reversing the role of.hunter and hunted, attacking and capsizing the boat containing her wouldbe captors and of seeing that none of them escapes alive. "Imagine," writes the Honourable William Elliott in describing the exciting sport he had in hunting ocean vampires, " a monster from sixteen to twenty feet across the back, full three feet in depth, possessed of powerful yet flexible flaps or wings, with which he drives himself furiously in the water or vaults high in the air, through which he skims like some enormous bird ; his feelers (commonly called horns) projecting several feet beyond his mouth, and paddling all the small fry, that constitute his

■food, into that capacious receptacle *■>•— and you will have an idea, though an imperfect one, of this extraordinary fish." The so-called " horns " to which allusion is made are a singular feature in this animal. The pectoral, or breast fins, much elongated*, pointed, arched in front, concave behind, stop short at the head, to reappear as frontal appendices projected on each side of the head. These appendices take the form and character of limbs, being flexible and' capable of grasping prey and carrying it to the mouth. The ' feelers," as they are called', are sometimes three or more feet long and are curiously articulated at the ends, so as to resemble the fingers of the human hand when clenched. In this way fishing boats and vessels Of a much lai-ger size have been dragged from their moorings, and* in some cases capsized, by the ocean vampire's having laid hold of the anchor. An instance of this kind occurred in the harbour of Charleston. A schooner lying at anchor,all at once, seemingly of its own volition, to the amazement and alarm of those on board, started at a furious rate across the harbour. Upon Hearing tjie opposite shore its course changed so abruptly as almost to capsize the vessel, and it recrossed the harbour to its former moorings. These mysterious flights across the harliour were repeated a number of times, in the presence of hundreds of astonished spectators, who were ut- ( terly at. a losfj fco account for the phenomenon. Trie migrations ceased as suddenly as they began. Not till then did the back and undulating flukes of an immense ocean vampire, appearing above the water of the harbour, disclose the motive power that catised it all. One' of the Curious habits of the fish is to throw somersaults, sometimes at a considerable distance beneath'the surface at the surface, arid sometimes in the air above the surface. The reason for ■ this peculiar practice, which is kept up for hours, has, so far as the writer knowtr, ' never been conjectured l . At times the great fish will throw itself bodily perhaps as much as ten or twelve feet into the air. A young xnan, a student of Columbia University, writing from Port of Spain, describes the flight of one of these enormous sea monsters, which passed completely over him and the «frht bout which he was rowing.