Mystery object washed up at Sand
A CALL has gone out to help identify a mystery object that has washed up on Sand Beach below the Sand Gairdens on the west side.
The bundle of what looks like latex similar to rubber could well be 100 years old and come from a shipwreck, with one commentator on the Shetland Seashore Discovery Facebook page suggesting it might even be from the Titanic.
The object was found by Lynn McCormack on Monday when out for a walk with the kids.
“Me and the kids decided to take the dog for a walk somewhere different to where we have been walking during lockdown, so we went to the Sand beach for a paddle in the sea,” she said.
“When we got to the end of the beach, we saw what looked like a bale or bundle of what looked like paper. We went for a closer look; it looked like layers of either rubber or leather.”
The consensus meanwhile is that the object is a bale of ‘gutta-percha’, a dense form of latex used extensively in the late 19th and early 20th century for many domestic and industrial purposes, and something that is still being used in some sectors such as dentistry.
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