It’s getting to the season, you know the one, where the bay seems to burst at the seams with life. This hallowed time, when football-sized Sooty shearwaters arrive in flocks by the hundreds of thousands, and giant blooms of jellies bubble up to the water’s surface; where juvenile and no-so-juvenile white sharks swim laps near the Cement Ship at Seacliff, and stampedes of Risso’s dolphins patrol for squid, the same squid that balloon the boats of fisherpeople.
For those who have been fortunate to experience multiple years of Monterey Bay wildlife, you’re familiar with this procession. In the summer through late fall along our Central Coast it often feels like the ocean is showing off simply because it can.
But there is one species that I never can quite wrap my mind around: the Ocean sunfish or Mola mola, “the fish so nice they named it twice.” During this time of year, I find myself racing the throngs of fisherfolk on the Santa Cruz wharf to rent the little green and yellow skiffs from Santa Cruz Boat Rentals.
While they’re out hoping to catch a big halibut, I’m praying to catch a glimpse of the behemoth Mola, the largest bony fish on the planet, an animal that can weigh up to 5,000 pounds (think: a small elephant or large pickup truck) and reach a length of ten feet. Its name translates to “millstone” in Latin, for its round, gray body and rough skin. In many languages its name also describes it being all head and no body; “head fish,” “swimming head,” and in Hawaiian, Kunehi ‘apahu, or “cut off.” Its body shape is quite distinct with one long dorsal fin and one long anal fin, and a nearly non-existent, paddle-shaped tail.
In one of my first positions in environmental education I worked at Catalina Island Marine Institute where our program director showed us a TED Talk by eminent Mola researcher and National Geographic Explorer, Tierney Thys. Like a child, I fell in love impatiently and on the spot. After the weeklong hustle of tending to the needs of young, sunburned learners, many of our instructors would bask in a kid-free day off by venturing out Blue Water Hunting or “BWH-ing” in search of molas cruising in the Channel Islands channel. I’ll never forget the first time I saw five juvenile Molas rise to the ocean’s surface like alien spacecraft. These fish got me hooked.
Varieties of ocean sunfish are found throughout the planet’s tropical and temperate seas, with a sixth species recently documented in 2017 in New Zealand, the largest of them all, the Hoodwinker sunfish, or Mola tecta.
In Monterey Bay, Mola molas are voracious predators who eat fish, squid, and other invertebrates. Their primary staple is gelatinous pelagic zooplankton, including our massive smacks of sea nettles and moon jellies, their favorite. While they may dive hundreds of feet deep into the bay to forage for food, they often return to the surface for what appears to be sunbathing, and are also seen floating on their side, displaying their body to nearby seabirds who crave a quick snack on the over 40 genera of parasites that make their home on this open ocean vessel.
According to Thys’ talk, molas “appeared shortly after the dinosaurs disappeared, 65 million years ago, at a time when whales still had legs, and they come from a rebellious little puffer fish faction… Of course evolution is somewhat random, and you know, about 55 million years ago there was this rebellious little puffer fish faction that said, oh, the heck with the coral reefs — we’re going to head to the high seas.
And lots of generations, lots of tweaking and torquing, and we turn our puffer into the Mola. You know, if you give mother nature enough time, that is what she will produce.” This seemingly improbable animal starts life as microscopic plankton with spines like its puffer relative and then gains 600 million times an increase in weight as it reaches adulthood. Holy mola.
This month, I got my fish fix. I found a slick of glassy water with the sun beating down and spotted the telltale floppy dorsal fin of a mola on the horizon as it drew figure eights next to a curious seagull. I slowly pulled the skiff up, not wanting to spook this often-elusive leviathan, and then cut the engine. Much to my surprise, this mola appeared to be as interested in me as I was in it. For about 15 minutes it swam circles around, under, and next to the boat, close enough to reach out and give its dangling parasites a scratch (is that what it wants? I kept wondering in my head). As I maneuvered around the inside of the boat it watched my every movement, its large golf ball eyeball sizing me up and down, its fused parrot-fish mouth agape. I thought about how Mola can mistake plastics for their gelatinous food source, and that they are often caught as bycatch by industrial fishing operations. I thought about my ancestors and what it was like for them to encounter this fish in the wild for the first time. Hawaiians believed it bad luck to kill a Mola, also known as makua, and “King of the Mackerel.” Doing so would prevent the needed schools of mackerel caught for sustenance from returning to Hawaiian waters. I could relate to their reverence for this animal as I met the Mola’s inquisitive and intense gaze one more time before it disappeared into the depths, and I appreciated a shared moment to recognize that I live on a planet where, in all of its peculiar and ancient glory, a creature like this exists.
Rachel Kippen is the executive director of O’Neill Sea Odyssey. She can be reached at rachel@oneillseaodyssey.org.
