450-Pound Rare Sunfish Washes Ashore on North Topsail Beach

A giant sunfish became the newest addition to a museum in North Carolina.

Sunfish Washed Ashore on North Topsail Beach

Museum curators and collection specialists North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh were thrilled when a giant sunfish joined the family. The sea creature weighed 450 pounds and measured 74 inches (6.1 feet) from its nose to tail and 82 inches (6.8 feet) from fin to fin.

The staff was excited to put it on display for the museum visitors. They also want to make the specimen available for researchers.

The rare sunfish, also called mola, was washed up on North Topsail beach near the Seaview Pier in December, according to PBS North Carolina.

Lily Hughes, Ph.D., an evolutionary biologist and Curator of Ichthyology at the museum, said she loved a good challenge and adding more to their collection of 1.4 million specimens, especially because sunfish is rare and unique. However, she didn't realize it would be a big challenge, considering its massive size.

Hughes even shared a photo of the giant sea creature lying in a blue container on Twitter. It was so big that Hughes looked so tiny next to it.

She added that it took so many people to bring the fish to the museum. The local citizens reportedly helped them move the enormous fish, and she thanked the NC State Vet Medicine for letting them use their horse scale to weigh the sharptail mola.

Gabriela Hogue, Ichthyology Collections at the museum, said the folks at the pier told them that the fish was in perfect condition, and it was cold outside when it was washed ashore, so the fish was preserved. The volunteers reportedly hauled it up and iced it down. They also keep it covered. They eventually found a large pickup truck to bring it back to Raleigh.

Once in the museum, they placed the sunfish in a large livestock feed tank with a 10% formalin solution. It will sit there for months to be preserved before it is transferred to a solution with 70% ethanol.

Hughes said the huge sharptail mola wouldn't be kept in the usual specimen jar. She added that they were lucky because only a few museums have facilities like theirs to preserve such an enormous creature.

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What is a Sunfish?

Ocean Sunfish or mola is the heaviest of all the bony fish. They can reach up to 14 feet vertically and 10 feet horizontally and weigh up to 5,000 pounds, according to National Geographic.

They develop their truncated, bullet-like shape due to their back fin, which never grows, but folds into itself instead, giving them a rounder rudder called a clavus.

Mola in Latin means "millstone." They are silvery in color and have a rough skin texture.

Molas are found in temperate and tropical oceans around the world. They are frequently seen basking in the sun near the surface and are often mistaken for sharks due to their large dorsal fins that merge above the water.

Their teeth are fused into a beak-like structure, and they cannot close their relatively small mouth fully.