Sunfish data sheet
Latin name:
mola mola
Trade name:
sunfish, sunfish
order name:
Puffer fish relatives (lat. Tetraodontisformes)
Family:
Sunfish (lat. Molidae)
Genus:
Sunfish (lat. Mola)
Origin:
original origin not known (often seen before Bali)
Size (in cm:
up to 300 cm long and 400 cm high
Weight:
Up to 2.3 tons
aquarium size
Length and width in cm:
61cm x 44.5cm
Content in litres:
at least 60 liters for several fish
Source: Bali.info
US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Mola mola, marked as public domain, details on Wikimedia Commons
key data
The sunfish is one of the sea creatures, their way of life and behavior least explored is. He is the largest and heaviest fish speciesthat is known. It is believed that sunfish more than 100 years old become.
When fully grown, these fish resemble one floating millstone, which led to its name (lat. mola = millstone). The curious fish like to approach divers and, despite their size, are fond of people not dangerous.
Distribution / areas of origin
Where do sunfish come from and how long have they been around?
The original origin of the sunfish is not known. Petrified fossils have been found in south-west Russia proving that this species of fish 55.8 to 33.9 million years ago in the Eocene existed.
Where do sunfish live?
Nowadays the fish are coming in all oceans the subtropical, tropical and temperate zones. They mainly live offshore in open water.
In the colder water layers from 30 to 480 meters and at Temperatures below 7.5° Celsius hunt for prey. When sunfish emerge during the day, they take the opportunity to sunbathe and lie flat on the water’s surface. This leads to them also being called sunfish.
In which regions have sunfish been sighted?
This species of fish occurs in east pacific from British Columbia and Canada to Chile and Peru and in the western pacific from Japan to Australia. In the western atlantic they have been sighted from Newfoundland and Canada to Argentina, im East Atlantic from Scandinavia to South Africa. Individual sunfish were born at the summer solstice in Mediterranean Sea seen. Sunfish are also frequently seen off the coast of Bali.
Global warming means that these fish are increasingly found in colder regions such as around the British Isles be spotted around. In the fall, they often arrive via the Gulf Stream to the North Sea and swim up to the Skagerrak and the Kattegat. With the salt water inflows, the sunfish gets into the western Baltic Sea.
There, their chances of survival are generally poor because of the lack of food and the reduced salt content.
food
What does the sunfish eat?
Sunfish feed on sea creatures, which they capture at night and eat with their beak-shaped mouth. These are mainly molluscs, salps, plankton, jellyfish, squid, squid, starfish and smaller fish and larvae of crustaceans and deep-sea eels.
G. David Johnson, Molalavdj, CC BY-SA 3.0
How do sunfish eat?
This species of fish does not have individual teeth, but two beak-like toothed ridgesthat are not for chewing. Larger prey such as jellyfish are repeated with the small mouth sucked in and spat outuntil the prey is broken up into smaller, easy-to-swallow chunks.
Sunfish also have pharyngeal teethwith which they shred their prey, but also generate noise can.
reproduction
The mating behavior and reproduction of sunfish is little explored. The fish become larger with age loners and rarely meet. Female sunfish can be found in a spawning aisle up to 300 million eggs produce, which are carried away with the current. You stand as most fertile fish species in the ‘Guinness Book of Records’.
Where is the spawning area?
The spawning area is, among other things, in the Zaragosso Sea, which is located between Florida and the Azores in the southwest Atlantic near the Bermuda Islands. The sea area, which partly belongs to the Bermuda Triangle, is about the size of Australia.
What do the fish larvae look like?
Larvae hatch from the eggs, which are one millimeter in size two to three millimeters in size are. The larvae are covered with five needle-like spines that protrude predators should protect. The spines recede during the larval stage and remain as bony remains on the skin of the fish. In contrast to the adult ocean sunfish, the pectoral fin of the larvae is relatively large and the caudal fin recedes in the course of development. The slightly elliptical, silvery larval body slowly takes the typically oval or disk-shaped of the ocean sunfish and the body weight multiplies by up to one in record time Weight of about 2.3 tons.
Other questions / user questions
Is the sunfish edible?
The sunfish is rarely caught for human consumption as it not particularly enjoyable is and possibly like boxfish or puffer fish that Tetrodotoxin neurotoxin contains. Some parts of the fish can be found in the chinese medicine Use.
What do sunfish look like?
The physique of this species of fish works conspicuously clumsy and compressed. The body has one disk-like shape and is flattened laterally towards the tail. The skeleton consists almost entirely of cartilage.
The grey, brown or greenish, up to eight inches thick fish skin is not covered with scales. live on her up to 50 different species of microorganisms, some of which are parasitic, and the fish skin at night silvery to glow bring. Ocean sunfish have no pelvic fins and, unlike other bony fish, they do not have a swim bladder.
The anal fin and the dorsal fin serve the locomotion. The dorsal fin is remarkably large and provided with several fin rays. Because of their dorsal fin, sunfish are common on the water surface mistaken for a shark.
How fast is a sunfish?
This species of fish moves using its powerful dorsal and anal fins. Although he as sluggish swimmer applies, the Sunfish can reach top speeds of about 3.2 km/h to reach. In three months he lays record distances of in the world’s oceans up to 2,000 kilometers return.
Are Sunfish Endangered?
The skin of the sunfish is up to eight inches thick, but killer whales, larger sharks and sea lions make one potential danger for him.
Another danger threatens him increasing marine pollution, since its main food source, the jellyfish, can resemble plastic waste. The increasing ship traffic as well as the always growing fishing fleets also make life difficult for the sluggish fish, since it Bycatch in their nets lands.
The World Conservation Organization IUCN therefore classifies ocean sunfish in its Red List as endangered a.