When it comes to the world’s beaches, all kinds of things have been known to wash up. From large whales to space rocket leftovers, anything is possible. The ocean is so vast that it could have anything floating around in it, and it just takes a good current to move a large object from one side of the world to the other.
On the other hand, residents of New Zealand were not expecting to see what had washed up on Muriwai Beach in Auckland this month.
Image Credit: Melissa Doubleday/Facebook/Muriwai & Waimauku Area Community Group
It looks like it could be a dead whale covered in barnacles, but a closer observation reveals that this monstrosity isn’t a dead animal at all. Officials say that it appears to be a large piece of driftwood covered in barnacles; its odd whale-like shape just happens to be a coincidence.
The barnacles look like “worms with shells” according to passerby who happened to spot the massive object from afar.
Driftwood can come from a number of things, such as sunken ships, collapsed docks, and collapsed trees that have floated out into the ocean from flooding via natural disasters around the world. No matter where it comes from, it tends to be quite a nuisance because it requires a cleaning crew with heavy-duty equipment to come out and dispose of it.
In this case, the driftwood is nearly whale-sized, so it was probably a type of large tree at some point. Whatever it may have been, something this big is too heavy to move by hand.
Although we may never know exactly where it came from, the object has gone viral over social media and there have been a lot of crazy explanations for it. Most are probably false, however, as driftwood seems like the most reasonable explanation for something of this caliber to wash up from the ocean.
Source: The Telegraph
