An enormous seven-foot-long hoodwinker sunfish has been found washed up on a Southern California beach. The giant of the seas is usually found on the otherside of the world but was found beached at UC Santa Barbara’s Coal Oil Point Reserve last week.
The fish is so rarely seen, it required researchers from California, Australia and New Zealand to weigh in and identify the strange-looking creature.
‘When the clear pictures came through, I thought there was no doubt. This is totally a hoodwinker,’ said marine scientist Marianne Nyegaard to CNN. ‘I couldn’t believe it. I nearly fell out of my chair.’
Nyegaard discovered the species in 2017 and spent years searching for it before she finally found and named it.
The fish turning up in Southern California is exceptionally unusual. Until now, all of the fish have been found in the southern hemisphere including Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Chile.
‘We know it has the temperate distribution around here and off the coast of Chile, but then how did it cross the equator and turn up by you guys? It’s intriguing what made this fish cross the equator,’ says Nyegaard.
‘The fish had gone unnoticed because no one really realized it looked different. There’s a long history of confusion about the species in the sunfish family,’ Nyegaard said. ‘This fish had managed to stay out of sight and out of everybody’s attention. It had been taken for mola mola (an ocean sunfish) so it was hoodwinking us all.’
