Burial in the ancient sea of Zealandia: A Toipahautea whale skeleton is slowly covered by sand 27-28 million years ago, on its path to become a fossil. Photo: Reconstruction by Chris Gaskin, ©Geology Museum, University of Otago
The inquiry into the removal of a whale fossil from where it lay at the mouth of the Little Wanganui River for 23 million years until someone hacked it out with a rock saw at Labour weekend has stepped up a notch.
Police conducted a search warrant on a Granity property yesterday morning, and recovered the fossil in pieces.
"Police will continue to work with our partner agencies and iwi to return the taonga to the local Karamea community," police said in a statement yesterday.
This morning the West Coast Regional Council, which has legal jurisdiction over the fossil site because it sits in the tidal zone, was waiting to hear from police on their next move.
Council consents and compliance manager Colin Helem said the council was considering its next move under the Resource Management Act, but at this stage police would continue to lead the inter-agency inquiry and would be considering charges for the fossil collector.
Helem said they would wait on that before considering any enforcement action at the council end.
Meantime, the council was taking "potential legal advice" over the removal of the fossil, which had been acknowledged to be at least an RMA offence.
"It's squarely in the hands of the police at the moment," Helem said.
A trio went to the site at Labour Weekend and proceeded to hack out the fossil with a rock saw and chisels.
It was "technically" a breach of the Coastal Plan, he said.
"As far as breaching a rule in our Coastal Plan by using mechanical means (to remove the fossil), it's a fairly minor breach."
However, the extraordinary circumstances of the Karamea incident would have a bearing on the next step.
A council compliance officer had accompanied police to be on standby during the search of the Granity property in order to verify what was being recovered.
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