A large and very weird fish washed up on the beach at Hug Point State Park in Oregon recently, drawing onlookers and experts alike.
The fish was seven feet long, and is an ocean sunfish called a Mola mola. The local Seaside Aquarium was among the first to post pictures of the creature on Facebook, which it said was “creating quite a stir.”
Unfortunately, it was not the freshest catch. The Aquarium noted in its post that the fish has been dead for some time, but it was still a fascinating spectacle. Indeed the fish corpse is hard to describe, and many people would not know it was a fish at first glance. The carcass looks like a giant, oversized gray grape on its way to becoming a raisin, almost as if it had deflated. The skin is intensely wrinkled and it is difficult to make out any anatomical features in photographs.
The Seaside Aquarium helpfully provided directions to the curious, advising peepers to go to Huge Point at low tide, then to turn north toward a waterfall.
The beached Mola mola was 7 feet long, which the Aquarium says is average for this species. The fish can grow up to ten feet long and weigh in at as much as 500 pounds. The animal likes to feed on jellyfish, which are plentiful at this time of the year, according to the aquarium.
This isn’t the first such dead visitor to Clatsop County, Oregon. Three other large sunfish have washed up on the shore since June. One of the others is called a hoodwinker sunfish, and this one measured 7.3 feet. Its scientific name is Mola tecta, and it has only been recognized as its own species of sunfish for about 10 years. The specimen that washed up in Oregon is one of the largest that humans have ever observed.
Seaside Aquarium wrote that it’s fairly common for sunfish to be found on the Oregon beaches. They say they think they’re getting more reports from the public since attention has been focused on the carcasses after the last sunfish made such a splash in local news. Plus, said the experts, people like to gather tips and data for the aquarium, so the same number of beached fish as usual are probably just drawing more public attention than usual.
