Mondfish or molas rarely appear off the German coasts, even if there were, for example, there were some spanies in the Baltic Sea in 2015. Mostly there are dead animals on the beach, which can indicate the dimensions of these shapely fish that do not look like their relatives. A particularly large and heavy copy in December 2021 drove off the coast of the Azores island of Faial and now officially bears the title of the hardest known bone fish on earth. José Nuno Gomes-Pereira from the Atlantic Naturalist Association Portugal and his team report this in the "Journal of Fish Biology".
After the discovery of the carcass, a ship was summoned, which could hoist the fish on board. On land, the survey followed: The more than 3.5 meter long animal weighed 2744 kilograms: a new world record, which has so far only been surpassed in the fish kingdom by cartilaginous fish such as the whale shark. These giants, which are more than twice as long, can weigh up to just under 20 tonnes.
"The specimen of the species Mola alexandrini described here is the heaviest specimen of a bony fish known to date," the participants wrote. It surpasses the largest previously known conspecific, which was caught in 1996 off Kamogawa, Japan, and weighed "only" 2300 kilograms. M. alexandrini can weigh more than twice as much as its close relative Mola mola, whose heaviest representative to date stands at 1320 kilograms.
It's not Pretty - But it is huge !!! A New Bony Fish World Record: Sunfish (Mola Alexandrini) Found Dead at the azores with 2744kg/325cm pic.twitter.com/ttqljwboe
What the animal died of is unknown. However, it had an injury on its head with paint residues, which could indicate a collision with a ship. However, it could not be determined whether this injury occurred before or after death.
The body of moonfishes is not streamlined like that of most other fish, but with its high-backed and laterally compressed body it almost looks like a floating head. This makes the sunfish rather bad swimmers, who let themselves drift with the current. In this way, they also get to the Baltic Sea, where they can survive only poorly due to lack of food and partly brackish water.
