While walking on Great Yarmouth Beach in Norfolk on New Year's Day, a person spotted an exotic juvenile sunfish that was washed ashore. Sunfish are usually found in tropical waters and are native to oceans near the equator, so the sight surprised the beachgoer.
The sunfish, the largest bony fish in the world, has an unusual, bullet-shaped back fin and can grow up to 3 meters in height and weigh over 2 tons. The person who saw it on the beach, Katherine Hawkes, initially thought it was a seal pup and took a picture of it in excitement, as reported by the Daily Star.
Exotic Sunfish
Katherine Hawkes described the sunfish as "odd-looking" and said that although it was sad that the fish had died, it was exciting to see such an unusual creature washed up on the beach. She noted that the sunfish she saw was a baby and only measured about 1.5 meters long.
Rob Spray, a coordinator for the conservation charity Seasearch East, explained that the sunfish likely died due to a lack of food and the cold temperatures of the North Sea. He stated that sunfish are not commonly found in the North Sea and that it is unusual to find one, even a juvenile, in these waters.
He suggested that the sunfish may have become stranded and run out of food, leading to death. Spray also noted that although sunfish may look intimidating, they primarily eat jellyfish and pose no threat to swimmers in the North Sea. The International Union for Conservation of Nature has classified sunfish as vulnerable on their Red List of Threatened Species. Rob Spray added that the sunfish's presence on a beach in Norfolk could indicate warming oceans bringing southern species into colder waters.
Largest Bony Fish
Last year, a massive sunfish weighing approximately 3 tons was spotted on the coast of Portugal and has set a new world record for the largest bony fish ever recorded. This giant sunfish, also known as a bump-head sunfish (Mola alexandrini), was found deceased off the coast of Faial Island in the Azores, a group of Portuguese islands in the North Atlantic Ocean, on December 9, 2021. The Atlantic Naturalist Association, a non-profit conservation and research group based on Faial Island, announced the discovery, and local officials brought the fish back to port for further study.
A necropsy (an autopsy for animals) was performed on the massive sunfish, and the findings were published in the Journal of Fish Biology on Oct. 11, 2022. The sunfish was approximately 12 feet (3.6 meters) tall and 11 feet (3.5 meters) long, weighing a staggering 6,049 pounds (2,744 kilograms) or almost 3 tons (2.7 metric tons).
During the necropsy, the researchers also examined the sunfish's abdomen and found forensic evidence. According to José Nuno Gomes-Pereira, a marine scientist at the Atlantic Naturalist Association and the principal researcher on the study, the deceased sunfish was a "majestic specimen." He stated that photos of the fish do not do justice to how impressive it would have looked in person
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