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.
More like this
Marine biologist Tierney Thys asks the audience to step into the open ocean, for a visit to the world of the Mola mola, or giant ocean sunfish.
The Department of Archaeology at the University of Lund is organising a panel debate about creationism on 30 August under the heading "Archaeology, the Bible and Charles Darwin -- a debate about evolution, cr
This past Sunday the Department of Archaeology at the University of Lund organised a public debate about creationism and archaeology. One of the invited speakers was Young Earth creationist Mats Molén, who should not in my opinion have been lent academic credibility in that manner.
First, a programming note; I'll be at the ASM meeting next week. I'll have some posted cued up, but I'll probably not have time to respond to comments (which shouldn't stop you from making them anyway). Here's a list o'links for you. Science first:
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.