Australian beach
Young surfers, nicknamed 'grommets' in local surfing parlance, wait for their friends to finish a post-sunset session on the waves off Wanda Beach in Sydney, July 16, 2014. Many of Sydney's famed beaches remain popular with surfers during the southern hemisphere winter months despite early sunsets and cooler ocean temperatures. REUTERS/Jason Reed (AUSTRALIA - Tags: SOCIETY TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY)

A mysterious giant creature may be lurking in New Zealand waters. Engineer Pita Witehara has seen an unexplained wake in an image of Oke Bay in the Bay of Islands in Google Earth.

The wake of what appears to be from a large creature was captured by satellite on Jan 30 at about 11:30 am, according to the Daily Mail. Witehira said the wake in the water might have been left by a creature measuring 12 metres long. The engineer from Hamilton in New Zealand said the Native Maori would call the mysterious creature "Taniwha" which means troll. From the size of the wake, it is neither a shark nor a whale. He believes the creature was "moving too fast" and "turning too sharply" to be a whale.

Witehira ruled out the possibility that the wake might be from a boat since there was no white froth" like what is usually seen after a motorboat has passed. He said he first noticed the unusually large wake last week when he was looking for his property near Oke Bay on Google Earth. When he zoomed in, he found the mysterious image. He explained that the creature has to weigh a lot more than a shark or whale to leave that kind of weight.

According to reports, Oke Bay has a white sand beach with 40 metres of shallow water. Witehira said the deeper parts of the Bay has "a lot of undergrowth." The mysterious sighting via Google Earth follows the popular image of a giant crab lurking in the shallow water in England. Google Earth is a popular tool for Internet users to see places with real-life images from satellites.

The image of the alleged giant crab appeared to be 50 feet wide became viral on social media. Many people had flocked to Whistable in Kent, England, hoping to see the giant crab. Some had insisted that the image of the giant crab was a hoax. Others say it was nothing more than a sandbank with a strange shape.