The earth is the home of human beings, born 4.5 billion years ago, during which time it gave birth to countless species, some of which still exist in the world, some of which have long been annihilated in the long river of history.
Today, anywhere on Earth there is an opportunity to find traces of their existence, and unsolved puzzles have followed, attracting countless biologists to worry about them.
In particular, those eyewitnesses with pictorial evidence are often more attractive to scholars from all walks of life, and the "1977 New Zealand Sea Monster Incident" to be explored today just left valuable image data.
The process of the event is bizarre, the image is clear, there are many witnesses, is one of the world's ten sea monsters unsolved mystery, over the years countless scholars and experts have published several articles on this matter, the opinions are divergent, and still have not been conclusive.
The corpse of a mysterious behemoth
On April 25, 1977, in the waters of Christchurch, New Zealand, the ocean-going trawler Mizuyo Maru, which belongs to the Japanese Ocean Fishery, was fishing here, the weather was clear, the view was excellent, the crew was busy, preparing to put away the winch trawling, everything was business as usual, but no one could imagine that what would happen next would cause an uproar in Japan and even the world.
At 10:40 a.m., with the sound of the winch operation, the fishing nets were pulled up from the 300-meter-deep seabed, and the crew stood on the deck and looked out, the weight of this fishing was much heavier than ever, presumably a great harvest.
The tightening of the net gradually surfaced, the crew noticed an abnormality, and the usually regular shape of the net was today stuffed by something. As soon as the net fell on the deck, everyone stepped forward to untie the net, and the scene in front of them shocked the experienced crew who went to sea and could not speak.
It was a huge carrion, about ten meters long and weighing two tons. The pungent stench spread on the deck, and the crew stood around the rotting corpse, looking at the behemoth, and no one could recognize what it was.
"Hoist this thing to the crane," ordered Michihiko Yano, who was the director of production of the Mizuyo Maru, who graduated from Yamaguchi Marine High School and had many years of experience in going to sea with the ship, was well informed, and was very good at dealing with various emergencies on board.
Watching the mysterious corpse slowly rise, the cloud of doubt in his ambition was everywhere, and he was also unsure what this thing was, so he went forward to carefully identify that the corpse was very badly decomposed, and the surface of the body was covered with white fat.
The head is narrow, the neck is slender, symmetrically born with four fins, the back is huge and has a fin, full of bones, complex structure, some tissues are scraped by fishing nets, scattered on the deck, the smell is unpleasant and disgusting.
Could it be a whale? Yano speculated for a while, and then dismissed this idea, because the carrion did not have the distinctive characteristics of the whale, and the size of the whale's head was far larger than the head of the carrion, the skeletal structure could not be corresponded, and most importantly, the slender neck would never appear on the whale.
The crew looked at the strangely shaped corpse and talked about it, some people said that it was a sea monster, an ominous thing, and some people said that it was a prehistoric giant shark, and everyone was talking about it, but they didn't know how to deal with it. With such a discovery on board, it was natural for the captain to decide, and Yano invited Akira Tanaka, then the captain of the Mizuyo Maru, to the deck.
Captain Akira Tanaka had never seen this monster, and in his opinion it was a rotten mess of rotten flesh, worthless and smelly, so he immediately asked to throw it into the sea, after all, the sea fish that was caught on the ship at that time was worth up to 200 million yen, and if it was contaminated with rotten corpses, the loss would not be borne by a captain.
Yano was a little anxious to hear this, and he was busy persuading the captain that this carrion was probably an undiscovered new creature with high scientific research value, and that it might as well be brought back to Japan for researchers to study, and if there was any major discovery, it would bring far more value than this ship of marine fish.
Tanaka Akira could not listen to these truths, he only saw the immediate interests, could not think of such a far-reaching extent, under Yano's persuasion, he only promised to let him take a few photos, and discard them as soon as possible. Yano took the camera, took four extremely valuable photos, measured the data related to the carrion, and made a simple sketch.
As soon as the crew saw that he had finished recording and rushed forward to prepare to discard the monster, Yano still felt that this object was extraordinary, and for fear of missing some major discovery, he cut off a pectoral fin and several fins to keep.
The carrion was then thrown off the ship by the crew, splashing a huge splash, carrying its secrets, and sinking back to the bottom of the sea, not knowing when it would be seen again.
Monster research craze
Yano returned to Japan and immediately submitted his photos and measurements of the rotting corpse to the company, which aroused great concern from the company's leaders, and unlike Captain Akira Tanaka's opinion, the top management agreed that the rotting corpse would be the most important discovery in Japan in recent years, so he prepared to make public the photos and some of the data he brought back.
On July 20, 1977, Dayang Fisheries held a press conference, at which they exaggerated the probability that the creature was an unknown creature, the news caused an instant uproar in Japan, and various media used exaggerated reporting techniques to render the Miyo Maru incident as a strange fantasy, and various statements were circulated for a while, setting off a monster boom in Japanese folk and even academic circles.
At that time, the Japanese people relied on hearsay stories to spread false rumors, and unanimously believed that this was a legendary sea monster, making waves at sea, eating people for a living, and most of the shipwrecks encountered by the monster were from the hands of this monster.
Some scholars speculate based on the slender neck and four fins on the photo that this corpse may be a prehistoric creature plesiosaur living more than 70 million years ago, after years of evolution led to the neck length and body size became smaller, some of the bone structure has also changed, the carrion salvaged from this incident has many similarities with plesiosaur from the characteristics.
As soon as this remark came out, it was tantamount to detonating a bombshell in the civil and academic circles, the event fermented rapidly, and soon attracted the attention of the world, biologists from all over the world have invested in the research and identification of this event, and they also named the rotting corpse "New Nissi", which means the New Loch Ness Monster.
As the research progressed, some people objected to the plesiosaur theory, believing that it was a fantasy to judge it so arbitrarily that the new Nissei had no basis for its resemblance, and that in Yano's notes and photographs, it was clear that The New Nissy had a dorsal fin that the plesiosaur did not have.
Since the probability of being a plesiosaur is very low, what is this monster?
Biologists soon came up with a new idea, this may be a juvenile whale, the sea creatures can reach the length of the new Nisi is only a few, only whales and the king squid can be compared with it, but from the appearance point of view, the new Nisi obviously has no characteristics of squid.
By comparing stranded whale carcasses found in recent years, scholars have found that whale corpses will indeed be covered with white fat after decay and weathering, which coincides with the carrion of this incident.
In contrast, whales have a remarkable tail fin, and the new Nissi has a large back and no associated features on the tail, which makes the whale not optimistic about experts.
The study was bogged down, and biologists came up with new ideas, all of which were plagued by insufficient evidence and no way to reach a final conclusion, and people turned their attention to Akira Tanaka, the captain who ordered the abandonment of the new Nissei.
In contrast to the highly acclaimed Mr. Yano, Akira Tanaka became the target of public criticism overnight, and the academic and civil society denounced him endlessly, and even the company criticized his behavior, for the sake of the small profit in front of him, he threw away the most important discovery of this century, and the loss could not be measured by value.
In addition, this matter has attracted the attention of all sectors of society, extremely dissatisfied with Japan's quality education, they believe that such an incident is not an isolated case, in the long run or will bring greater losses, the official should pay attention to, the relevant practitioners to give sufficient pre-job training.
At that time, Japan was in a stage of rapid development, eager to improve the status of its own country, the Muyo Maru incident should have been used to make a big fuss, so that Japan's international popularity to a higher level, so it was a pity to lose, so it issued a high reward to encourage ships to go to the sea where the new Nisi was found for salvage.
Within a few days, new Zealand's waters were crowded with fishing boats, many of which had been sent by other countries, so that no one wanted to give up such precious scientific research materials, but the vast sea was boundless, and to find a rotting corpse was tantamount to finding a needle in a haystack, and months had passed without a single ship finding a trace of New Nisi.
In order to commemorate the Muyo Maru sea monster incident, Japan issued a stamp printed with plesiosaurs and the National Science Museum in November 1977, and with the heat of the event, people from all walks of life used the gimmicks of Shin Nissi to market products, and the derivatives of Shin Nissi became the best-selling items in Japan that year.
The real identity that is confusing
Since the ontology of the new Nisi could not be found, the helpless researchers had to look back at the existing data, and this time a person provided a new research direction for everyone.
O'Wayne Wheeler of the Natural History Museum in London, England, published an article in which he first proposed the shark hypothesis, most of the time, the unidentified corpses salvaged on the coast are eventually identified as sharks, and when the shark dies and the body begins to decompose, it will be eaten by scavengers in the sea, and then salvaged ashore.
Neonesy is mostly a shark carcass, after a long period of decay, resulting in the jaw bone and gill arch tissue falling off, leaving only a narrow head and slender neck, part of the tail decayed, forming a false plesiosaur form, which is misunderstood.
The only sharks in the ocean that are similar to the size of the new Nissi are whale sharks and basking sharks, and the answer should be in between, and this article makes a strong conjecture about the identity of the new Nisi and narrows the scope, and the shark hypothesis has become the main direction of scholars' research.
Mr. Takatsu, who works in shark cutting, is one of the proponents of shark talk, and in late 1997, he captured a basking shark, removed its jaw, and compared it with the angle from which Mr. Yano had taken the photo, he restored the scene of the day one-to-one, and the basking shark was hoisted in the same way as the photo taken by Mr. Losto.
Shortly thereafter, Tokyo Fisheries University released a test information, which was a comparison of the pectoral fin sample taken by Mr. Yano with the total amino acid analysis of collagen of the basking shark, and from the analysis results, the difference between the new Nissi sample and the basking shark was extremely low, and it was basically possible to determine that the organism was a highly corrupt basking shark.
There is growing evidence that The new Nissi's true identity is that of a basking shark, a claim that is supported by most researchers, with only a handful of scholars opposing it.
Opponents believe that the shark's physiological structure is peculiar, it urinates with its skin, and it contains a large amount of ammonia in the shark's flesh, so it should be able to smell it clearly when fishing, but according to the description of the crew and Mr. Yano, there was no other smell at that time except for the foul odor, and with so many experienced crew members, had no one seen the carcass of basking sharks?
According to the photos, the unknown organism was hoisted by a crane with a steel rope, the shark bones are mostly cartilage, which will become more fragile after death, and the highly decomposed corpse cannot withstand the body weighing 2 tons, and it is difficult to support it during the hoisting process.
Most importantly, there is no fat attached to the shark's body surface, the shark's fat is stored in the liver, and the surface of the new Nissi is covered with white fat, these arguments are not unreasonable, biologists have their own opinions, and it is slow to have a clear answer to the public.
In order to draw a final conclusion to the events, the Japanese officially formed New Nisi Incident Research Group held research meetings on September 7 and September 19, 1977, attended by dozens of world-renowned scholars, including experts in biochemistry, ichthyology, paleontology, comparative anatomy and other fields.
Experts who held the shark theory at the meeting pointed out that sharks are indeed excreted by the skin, but the degree of decay when the new Nisi is salvaged ashore is extremely serious, and the foul odor covers the proper ammonia smell, and the urea itself is water-soluble, which reduces the ammonia smell of the shark to a certain extent.
Experts also explained that although basking sharks are cartilaginous fish, they are actually not as fragile as the public imagines, otherwise how can they support the weight of basking sharks at every few tons? When the new Nissi was recovered, the bones were still intact and there was no phenomenon of being broken by a rope.
The fatty attachments on the surface of the neonicus body cannot be confirmed to be fat, and these whitish, viscous substances should be composed of ligaments and connective tissue during the decay process, or new fatty substances produced during the decay process.
At the end of the seminar, some of the experiments were not completed, and the final results were not immediately made public. It was not until July 1978 that the French-Japanese Oceanographic Association published part of the results of the meeting, presenting nine papers of the research group in the form of a report.
Although most of the experts at the meeting concluded that the new Nissi was a rotten basking shark, some experts still held a negative attitude, arguing that the characteristics of the new Nissi did not correspond to any known organism, and from a taxonomic point of view, the possibility of being another unknown organism was not excluded.
In general, the research team's papers and laboratory reports provide strong evidence for the shark theory, with several chains of evidence, and most of the opposing experts speculate and cannot put forward substantive opinions, and even researchers who once supported the plesiosaur theory have to admit that all kinds of evidence point to basking sharks.
Regrettably, this report has not attracted widespread attention in the society, and various media do not seem to want the monster to be overturned, and few people have reported on this result.
For many years, some occult magazines and writers have insisted on plesiosaurs and sea monsters, and no one has clarified that the people are naturally convinced that the new Nissy is an unknown creature.
Although the study of the new Nissi has long come to an end, its legend is still widely circulated in the media and folklore today.
No one dared to be 100% sure of the identity of the new Nissi, who was probably lying quietly in a certain sea at the moment, waiting for posterity to discover its secrets.
The earth is mysterious and vast, at some time and place in the future, there will be more shocking events, human beings as the lord of the earth, always maintain the desire to explore new things, in the face of such events, people should use a scientific and rigorous attitude to argue, out of context in a way will only make the facts more vague, thus blinding themselves.