The wētāpunga – the god of ugly things – still survives on Hauturu, weighing more than a sparrow. The giant wētā of the mountains still clings to rocky slopes. The tree wētā still hisses from holes in your garden. But you probably do not know the coastal giant – the wētā that traded forest for boulder field, leaf litter for kelp, and the damp dark of the bush for the salt-sprayed crevices of the shore. It was a different kind of giant, and its loss is a different kind of quiet. It lived where no other giant wētā dared. The coast is a brutal place – salt spray that desiccates soft bodies, wind that tears at exposed limbs, waves that flood crevices without warning. The coastal giant evolved to survive all of it. Its exoskeleton was thicker, more water-repellent than its forest cousins. Its legs were shorter, stockier, built for gripping wet rock. It was a wētā that could hold its breath, cling to a boulder during a storm surge, and emerge unscathed when the tide receded. It was an omnivore – like all giant wētā – but its diet reflected its habitat. It ate dead fish, kelp, seabird eggs (when it could reach them), insects, and probably the droppings of seals and seabirds. It was the recycler of the rocky shore, turning stranded marine detritus into insect protein. It was also prey – for gulls, for penguins, for the laughing owl that once hunted these coasts. It was part of the web, the hidden thread that connected the sea to the land. Breeding was slow. Females laid eggs in soft soil under boulders, using their long ovipositors to inject eggs deep into the ground. Nymphs took two to three years to reach adulthood. A coastal giant might live for five years or more – a long time for an insect, a risky investment in a world that was about to become much more dangerous. Rats and human disturbance destroyed it. The kiore (Pacific rat) arrived with Polynesian settlers and spread along the coastlines, finding every crevice where a giant wētā might hide. Rats eat wētā. They eat their eggs. They eat their nymphs. A slow-breeding, ground-dwelling insect that hides in crevices is not a survivor when the crevices are full of rats. European settlement made it worse. Ship rats arrived – smaller, faster, better climbers. Coastal forests were cleared, exposing boulder fields to sun and wind. Human activity – trampling, burning, development – destroyed the fragile habitat where the coastal giant had clung for thousands of years. By 1920, it was gone. The last specimen was probably collected by a naturalist who had no idea he was holding the final individual. He pinned it, labelled it, put it in a drawer. And the rocky shore fell silent. The rocky shore phantom is a ghost because it was always a phantom – hidden, secretive, seen only by those who knew where to look. Now there is nothing to look for. Just boulders, kelp, wind, and the memory of a creature that used to crawl between the cracks.