For the past nine years Bay View resident Marion Choat has taken a refreshing daily beach walk, and has got used to coming across the occasional jellyfish, fish head, jandal or general flotsam and jetsam from passing ships.
But on Monday she was startled to see what she initially thought was
the severed head of a large shark.
"Until I got a bit closer and I realised it was a fish ... a pretty strange sort of fish though."
She dashed home to get her camera to get shots of the creature which appeared to have come ashore on the low tide.
"I don't think it was very long dead because there wasn't a mark on it and the birds hadn't started getting at it."
She took some shots and later called her brother, describing the creature.
He told her it was a sunfish.
"I've seen a lot of things washed up but never anything like that."
She paced out the size of it and said it was "four feet long" and the same distance across.
That made the sunfish, or mola mola, a juvenile.
Some can grow to three metres long.
While not classified as rare in the oceans, they were far from frequent visitors to Hawke Bay - especially at this time of the year when the waters were cooling off into winter.
They were more common in northern waters between November and June, although the occasional straggler had been known to journey as far south as the Otago Peninsula.
The last one to come ashore was also at Bay View, in November 2009.
At that time, Department of Conservation ranger Hans Rook said that one was only about the sixth he had seen washed ashore in his 21 years on the job.
Mrs Choat said she went down to the beach again yesterday but the incoming tide had taken the creature back out.
Unfortunately for the gentle plankton-seeking sunfish it's official description is not a flattering one.
"This bizarre creature resembles a squashed rugby ball with twin rudders," it is noted.
