'Terrifying' discovery washes ashore on 'cursed' Aussie beach
A local woman made the discovery at at Dunsborough in Western Australia with witnesses left wondering what the creature is.
A woman's "terrifying" find along the shoreline at what's been described as a "cursed" Australian beach has locals totally "freaking out". The creepy marine creature, that appears to have been deceased for some time, was spotted on Friday at Dunsborough in Western Australia.
The local woman took to social media to question its origins, and just exactly what the tattered species is. Images show the creature with a long, textured brown torso, with a tail and two back fins almost similar to those of a seal.
Its body resembles an eel, as responders pointed out, but there wasn't much left of it's head to identify.
Locals stumped as other-worldly creature washes ashore in WA
"It’s terrifying whatever it is," one woman said in response to the pictures. "This is freaking me out," echoed a second. The woman who wrote the post originally shared another image of a mysteriously deceased animal from the same beach, warning that she thought the spot was "cursed".
"Kind of looks like a mangled monkfish missing its face. But that's probably not what it is," somebody responding to the dead aquatic animal suggested. "Why does its tail look almost fury?"
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Yahoo News Australia contacted a range of different marine experts for clarity on the species. Associate Professor Ian Tibbetts with the Centre for Marine Science at Queensland University said it was most likely a decomposing wobbegong.
"This is probably a decomposing wobbegong shark and is likely Orectolobus maculatus — a spotted wobbegong — based on the colour patterning," he told Yahoo.
While the mystery appears to have been solved, the WA woman questioned what other animals would turn up at the spot in the coming days. "It was on the beach of a holiday resort of all places," she wrote.
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