Fishy Rambles
Recently I was talking a lot of fish talk with @Kazuma Satou and @Zariel and it gave me an idea for some new blog entries. I haven't updated my blog in awhile, and I've pretty much done all blog entries of photography I've taken, so this is a new one for me. Since I'm studying fish and working towards a PhD in Marine Sciences, I thought it would be fun to do several entries focused on fishy friends and fun fishy facts 
It won't be all fish, I'll also focus on different types of marine life as well. I want to try to do one entry a day this week, mostly to brush up on facts myself and this helps with my studies too so it's win/win. Maybe someone can learn something too or at least be entertained for a few minutes 
Today I will talk about the almighty Mola Mola, otherwise known as a sunfish. These are my absolute favorite fish simply because they look so dorky and are silly little guys (I like my fish how I like my men, what can I say? LOL). If you've never seen one, they look like someone didn't know what a fish looked like and tried to draw one:
A few quick facts about the Ocean Sunfish:
- They weigh between 250 - 1,000 KG (or 545 - 2,200 pounds).
- They can be up to 1.8m long (around 5ft 10 inches), and specimens up to 3.3m (10ft, 10 inches) tall have been recorded from fin-to-fin height.
- The largest one on record was records in New Zealand and weighed 2,300 KG (5,100 pounds).
- Sunfish are not wide and have virtually no width and are a flat fish.
- It recieved its name because it likes to sunbathe on top of the water and is commonly seen floating around at the surface of the water.
- In German, it is also referred to as Schwimmender Kopf, or "swimming head", and in Polish, it is named samogłów, meaning "head alone", because it has no true tail.
- The earliest known fossils of the sunfish date back to the Holocene period, around 11,700 years ago.
- There is a freshwater version of sunfish but it is not related to the Mola Mola and is part of the Centrarchidae family.
- The Sunfish shares a lot of characteristics with the Puffer fish and was originally mistakenly classified as part of the Puffer fish family. Likely due to the fact they have beaks to eat with instead of teeth like a Puffer fish.
- It was believed in early research that Sunfish just drift along with the ocean current to travel, but recently species have been recorded traveling 26 KM (16 miles) in a day and actively hunting at 200m (650 ft) and below and they can go as fast as 3.2km an hour (1.9 miles an hour).
- A sunfishes main predators are Seals, Sea Lions, Sharks, and Killer Whales.
Not a lot is yet known about Sunfish because they haven't been researched extensively, and we are only recently discovering more about their mating, eating, and migration patterns. There was a lot of misinformation about them up until recent years as well. For example, their diet was once thought to consist mainly of jellyfish and Gelatinous Zooplankton, but in recent years it's been determined they consume mostly Flounder, Eel, and Squid. As for their lifespan, we still don't even know that because it's not yet been documented in their natural habitat, though it's believed they may be able to live around 25 years.
Another type of Sunfish is the Giant Sunfish, which is slightly different to the Mola Molas, although they are in the same family. These are considered to be the largest bony fish and weight up to 2,700 kilograms (6,000 lb) and is usually 3.3 m (11 feet). They are easily distinguishable from Mola Molas as they are much wider and have bumpy bodies:
Sunfish pose no harm to humans and are often docile so if you find yourself diving next to one, you don't need to worry as they will likely ignore you, and you can probably get a really cool picture next to a HUGE fish~!
I'm thinking tomorrow's entry I might do crabs, but if you have suggestions let me know in the comments~
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