well of course you could model it with curves and lofts or extrudes of nurbs. this kind of object I´d model in polys tho. but like bendingiscool said you could also use zBrsuh. this might be easier since you can just use a hightMap or just z-paint it ZB and export a higer resolution geometry from zBrush into maya.

nurbs modeling might be a mess here.. at least for me.