It was
easy for scientists to have doubts when they were told that the carcass of a
colossal fish had been found floating just off the coast of Faial Island in
Portugal’s Azores archipelago in the mid-Atlantic Ocean in December 2021.
People do tend to exaggerate when it comes to the size of fish, after all. However,
their skepticism lifted the moment they laid eyes on the fish. It was the
biggest bony fish they had ever seen. In fact, it might have been the biggest
anyone had ever seen.
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Weighing around
2,700kg, which is around the weight of a Chevrolet Suburban, and stretching
more than three meters in length, the scientists say the supersize southern
sunfish, a species of mola, was the heaviest bony fish ever recorded.
More than 90
percent of fish have bony skeletons and thus fall into the category of bony fish.
This sets them apart from sharks, rays, and some fish that have cartilaginous
skeletons. Although no bony fish has ever come close to reaching the size of a
whale shark, the largest cartilaginous fish, the size of the sunfish found in
the Azores is impressive.
“It’s pretty rare
to find big fish these days due to overfishing and habitat degradation,” said
Kory Evans, a fish ecologist at
Rice University who was not involved in the
discovery of the SUV-size sunfish.
The last bony fish
recorded anywhere near that size was a female of the same species caught in
Japan in 1996 that weighed around 2,300kg and measured roughly 2.7m across.
The massive
southern sunfish found in the Azores is “not an abnormal individual whose
extreme size is due to a genetic mutation”, said José Nuno Gomes-Pereira, a
marine biologist with Atlantic Naturalist and co-author of a study published
this month in Journal of Fish Biology that documented the specimen. “This
species can get to this size. We just finally managed to weigh and measure one.
There are more of these monsters out there.”
Aside from their
size, molas are known for their clumsy swimming style. Unlike most fish, molas
use their dorsal and anal fins to propel their huge, hulking bodies through the
water, which they do slowly and haphazardly. The open-ocean fish are often seen
floating on their sides at the sea’s surface, which scientists think is to warm
up or to make it easy for seabirds to make a meal of the parasites on their
skin.
After local
fishermen and boaters found the southern sunfish floating near the Azores, a
group of scientists from the research nonprofit Atlantic Naturalist and the
local marine wildlife authorities towed its body into Horta Harbor and hoisted
it onto land using a forklift.
Gomes-Pereira and his colleagues spent several hours
measuring the length, weight, and stomach contents of the fish. The mola’s
nearly 20-cm thick skin made the dissection particularly tricky. And because
the fish was too large for any local museum to preserve, it was buried on a
nearby hillside.
The scientists were
not able to determine the exact age of the fish, but Gomes-Pereira believes the
creature was at least two decades old. Estimates suggest that is around the
limit of their life span, but no one really knows how long these animals can
live.
This particular
fish’s life may have been cut short. While examining the fish, Gomes-Pereira
noticed a large contusion on the side of the animal’s head. That could be a
sign that the fish was hit by a boat. The scientists believe the boaters in the
Azores need to slow down and be more mindful of their effect on ocean wildlife.
At the same time, Gomes-Pereira hopes that the discovery of
this fish shows people that the ocean is still healthy enough to support the
largest animals on the planet, as well as inspire them to do more to protect
it. “It’s a warning for us in terms of the need for further conservation
measures,” he said.
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