I came across these pictures from Fogonazos. Be sure to go over there for a great article about Mola Mola, the giant ocean sunfish, with about 2 dozen more pictures!
Now that's a whole lotta Mola! Read Fogonazos to see why you might not want to eat its flesh though.
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From the Fogonazos link, "Finally, the flesh of the ocean sunfish contains neurotoxins similar to those of other poisonous tetraodontiformes, but it is considered a delicacy by some people." Have we finally discovered the reason why -- as per the Fish Guys (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4smMyPNcA0) -- that they "taste like ass"?
Happy fish Fridays, folks.
I love one of the German names for the mola: schwimmender Kopf.
I wrote a post on my blog a couple of months ago, about a paper on the daily swimming patterns of mola; there's also a bit about the phylogeny of Molidae.
Link!
Woo. Have you guys seen this picture of a huge manta ray being trawled and someone is riding it like they were from fantasy story
http://www.ectomo.com/index.php/2008/08/12/trawling-for-giants/
Ooops!
my mola post
When it comes to molas, I look to Tierney Thys. She has this great site at Oceansunfish.org, and has a tracking project going on. I still haven't found any mola mola in Minnesota, but I will call her as soon as I see one.
As far as their body style, I would say that they are the AMC Gremlin of the ocean.
thats abig fish! You read about the sizes in books, but its not until you see photo with a human for scale you see HOW big
I don't think you'll be finding many Molas in MN. :p
I saw a sunfish about 7 years ago on a whale watching trip. It was not as big as the one shown in the pictures above, but it came right up to the boat and I saw that it was big. I never saw or heard of one before, it was very interesting. The man driving the boat told me it was a shark, which scared me because all I saw was a fin.