07/11/2017
This article was in the Gloucester Times today all about Sunfish (mola mola) we see these large fish several time during the season. They are amazing. Good information đđ
Mike Parisi cut the engine on the Anna Marie and we drifted on in next to a gigantic ocean sunfish that was just basking on the surface in the bright morning sunlight. We were in the Gulf of Maine about five miles out east from the Merrimack River when we saw this big fin waving in the water. Being curious souls, we steamed on over to photograph and observe one of natures oddities.
An ocean sunfish is the largest boney fish in the ocean. They can weigh up to 5,000 pounds, but this one was an average one, weighing in at about a ton and looked to bee about six feet long from fin-to-fin. It takes a while for your mind to wrap around what you are seeing. This fish looks like the front end of a shark, but the body abruptly ends just behind the dorsal fin with a tail, called a clavus, composed of 12 fin rays that reminds you of a fan on a turkey. Their name in German is schwimmender kopf which translates as âswimming headâ and in Polish it is samoglow which means âhead alone.â Their spinal column contains fewer vertebrae and is shorter in the body than any other fish.
Their Latin moniker is mola mola which means millstone as they are round, grey, and have a very rough-surfaced skin that feels like 36-grit sandpaper. The skin is covered with a mucus that reminds you of a slobbering Labrador and they are almost always hosting a variety of parasites. In fact, when they are lying on their sides on the surface you can see gulls and other birds cleaning the skin of these hangers-on. While they are swimming below the surface they are often attended by smaller fish that feed off of these parasites.
These fish are amazing divers. Although they may look like lethargic drifters when they are recovering on the surface, they are really strong swimmers, using their powerful dorsal and a**l fins to propel them. A recent tagging operation revealed that one fish in the Pacific ocean dove as deep as 3,600 feet and had traveled over 1,700 miles in one two-month period. They will dive as many as forty times a day down to the bottom to feed. It is believed that they spend as much as half of the day on the surface, using the rays of the sun to warm them from the cold they experience when they dive so deep.
Another weird thing about them is their mouth and teeth. They are never able to fully close their round mouth and their front teeth are welded together, looking like the beak of a parrot. Deep in their throat another set of chompers called pharyngeal teeth are located. They feed almost exclusively on jelly fish, but will eat squid, crustaceans, and other small life forms. However, their diet is so poor they are forced to eat a large amount to maintain their size.
The adult female fish will lay up to 300,000,000 eggs at one time. This is by far the largest amount of eggs to be produced by any living vertebrate. Once the eggs are dropped, the males will cover them with s***m. The eggs are very tiny at only 0.1 inches long. As they turn into fry, they look like a small pufferfish. Although they school together when they are young, they pursue a solitary lifestyle when they are adults. In an amazing growth spurt, they will grow to as much as 60 million times their birth weight. According to biologists, these fish emerged about 40 million years ago when whales still had legs. They descend from a large puffer fish that left the coral reefs for the open ocean. They never became streamlined like other fishes, but became rounder and more abbreviated in the hind quarters.
Ocean sunfish range from as far north as the Arctic circle to as far south as Chile. They live in any temperate zone all around the globe. They prefer water temperature that ranges from 55 to 62 degrees. Molas are harmless, posing no threat to humans unless they land on you! However, sea lions, killer whales and sharks will eat them, especially when they are young. Sea lions have been observed maiming them by just eating their fins. They are not endangered and are only eaten by humans in the Pacific Rim area, considered a delicacy in Japan.
So, donât be surprised when you see a waving dorsal fin off the coast of the North Shore. Slide on over a view one of natureâs special creatures.
