notforsale

While out fishing recently, Jesse Anderson pulled up a trawl net from 450 feet deep and found inside, of all things, a 2.5 inch long Common Murre egg (pictured). “It had a beautiful green-blue tint to it,” he said.

As a side note, no one really knows why murre eggs are so strangely shaped, but the favored assumption is that if prodded, the eggs roll in a circle — which is important, since murres lay their eggs on ledges of steep rocky outcroppings, and they’d be less likely to roll off (http://tinyurl.com/eggnet). But how the egg wound up deep in the ocean is anyone’s guess, much less how it has stayed intact.

Jesse delivered his little treasure from the deep to the Wildlife Center of the North Coast (www.coastwildlife.org), which was delighted to receive it. “It is pretty heavy, so we know something is in it,” a WCNC representative said. “But we won’t be cracking it to find out — it will be a new addition to our education program.”