A rare giant fish that washed up on a beach in California recently has been identified as a hoodwinker sunfish, solving the mystery for those who were puzzled by the appearance of the unfamiliar seven-foot fish. The deceased creature washed in with the tides at Coal Oil Point Reserve, where it was spotted by an intern at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
A giant hoodwinker fish washed ashore in California. Image: Tom Turner
Coal Oil Point Reserve is part of the UC Natural Reserve System, and it’s an ecologically-important area that is home to a number of endangered and threatened species. The hoodwinker sunfish, which goes by the proper name of ‘mola tecta’ is so rare that it was only first discovered in 2014 on a beach in New Zealand. It is thought to live in the Southern Hemisphere around New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and Chile.
The hoodwinker fish is known by its proper name, mola tecta. Image: Thomas Turner
It has never been seen before in the Northern Hemisphere, apart from one specimen that washed ashore in the Netherlands in 1889. This fish was only properly identified in 2017 at Naturalis Biodiversity Center, where it forms part of the collection there. Marianne Nyegaard of Murdoch University in Australia is the world’s foremost expert on the species, and she originally named the hoodwinker for its elusive nature,
The hoodwinker fish was found by an intern at Coal Oil point Reserve in California. Image: Thomas Turner
She and her colleague, Ralph Foster, became involved in identifying the Californian fish via iNaturalist, an online community for scientists where crowd-sourced species identification frequently occurs. Marianne instructed conservation specialist, Jessica Nielsen, and Thomas Turner, an associate professor in UC Santa Barbara’s ecology, evolution and marine biology department, to take tissue samples and more comprehensive images of the giant fish to help her with its identification.
It it is unclear how the giant fish ended up so far from its known range in the Southern Hemisphere, Image: Thomas Turner
Having received these, she was able to definitely categorise it as a mola tecta. The discovery has been very exciting for the university and also for the wider science community, although it is as yet unclear how the giant fish ended up so far from its known range in the Southern Hemisphere,
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