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Chilean scientists are baffled by a huge, gelatinous sea creature found washed up on the southern Pacific coast and were seeking international help
identifying the mystery specimen. The dead creature was mistaken for a beached whale when first reported about a week ago, but experts who went to see
it said the 40-foot-long mass of decomposing lumpy gray flesh apparently was an invertebrate. Chilean scientists look at the creature near Puerto
Montt, July 1, 2003. Scientists said on Wednesday that the huge mass may be a rare type of giant octopus or just discarded whale blubber.
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Elsa Cabrera director of the Center for Cetacean Conservation in Santiago.
I went to see the carcass last weekend after the Navy alerted her center to what it thought were two beached whales. One carcass was a humpback and
the other a complete surprise.
"We'd never seen such a strange specimen," Cabrera said.
Its characteristics match those given by 19th Century scientists that examined the creature found in 1896, who described pulling at the 60-foot
(18-meter) animal with a team of horses and hacking at it with an axe without making a dent.
[Edited on 4-7-2003 by MiStErBeLLaTrIx]
