I’ve spent a lot of time at sea in my life. I grew up around the water and on boats. My father had a boat that he used for commercial fishing for a while. I used to go out commercial fishing before I got into working in the offshore sector. I even went deep sea for a while.
In all those years, I’ve never seen a mola mola (ocean sunfish) in the ocean until recently. I had heard about them and seen them in pictures and on TV and they fascinated me.
They just look so weird.
It looks like a shark or something chomped off half their body but they still manage quite well.
I finally did see a wild one recently. I was on watch on the bridge on my last ship and one was floating around. It must have been a pretty big one for us to be able to see it at all from the bridge.
I couldn’t leave the bridge to get a good look at it. I could only see it from the bridge wing which is about 75 ft above the water and about 200 ft forward of where it was. We were able to pick it up in the camera but not very well.
I hope to see some more of them around here. So far this hitch we have not seen much wildlife, but this evening there was a school of dolphins just off the bow. That’s always a good sign. 🙂
PS- it is Wednesday here.
Amazing looking fish!
yes, they are pretty cool fish. 🙂
I saw these in Bali, amazing. They are related to sharks and rays, no bones.
I think they have bones Ron…
“Topping out around 5,000 pounds, molas are the world’s heaviest bony fish. (This category doesn’t count sharks and rays. The whale shark is 10 times bigger.) “
My mistake.
Doggone it, just when I think my brain is full you make me learn something new.
are you like I am, when my brain gets full with a new thing, I have to dump some of the old stuff?
As I age my brain seems to be developing an “auto-dump” feature. Unfortunately it seems to have random selection.