Earlier this week, a seven-foot fish washed ashore in Gearhart, Oregon, creating quite a buzz. On Monday, the fish, believed to be an ocean sunfish, or Mola mola, measuring 7 feet, 3 inches, attracted many curious onlookers.
The Seaside Aquarium shared the news on social media, drawing even more people to the beach. However, when Marianne Nyegaard, a marine biologist from New Zealand, heard about the fish, she suspected it might be something different. Nyegaard, who discovered a new species of sunfish called Mola tecta, or hoodwinker sunfish, in 2017, thought this fish might belong to that rarer species.
Nyegaard contacted the Seaside Aquarium, and its staff quickly responded by taking photographs, measurements, and tissue samples. These new details allowed Nyegaard to confirm that the fish was indeed a hoodwinker sunfish, and possibly the largest one ever recorded.
Tiffany Boothe, assistant manager at the Seaside Aquarium, explained that hoodwinker sunfish were once thought to only exist in the Southern Hemisphere. However, a few have recently been found in California and even as far north as Alaska. This suggests that hoodwinkers might have been seen in the Pacific Northwest before but were mistaken for Mola mola.
Boothe noted that the fish’s body was in good condition when it washed ashore, and there was no clear indication of how it died. The fish remains on the beach near 10th Street and is likely to stay there for a few more days, as its tough skin is hard for scavengers to puncture.
