Huge sunfish washed up at Gore Bay

Press, 12 October 1988, Page 6

Huge sunfish washed up at Gore Bay

A huge ocean sunfish was washed up on the beach at Gore Bay last Friday. The large female fish was 3m long, 4.26 m around the middle, and probably weighed more than a tonne. The fish was “quite a sight and rather beautiful,” said Mrs Anne Nicholls, of Gore Bay. She and her husband found the fish while walking on the beach on Saturday morning. The sunfish had coarse skin, big lips, huge eyes, no tail, and was shaped

like a pie dish, she said. Her husband, Mr Brian Nicholls, said the sunfish had a reputation for laziness as it appeared to aimlessly drift the world’s oceans sunbathing. But recent studies of the stomach contents of sunfish revealed they ate animals only found in very deep water, which indicated activity well below the surface, he said. The sunfish at Gore Bay had no obvious wounds and may have died of parasite infection, said Mr Nicholls. The seagulls got all the

external parasites, barnacles, lice and the odd sea tulip, but the Cheviot County Council got the job of burying the fish, he said. But before this was arranged, the sunfish was washed out to sea again. The Nicholls supplied information about the fish’s measurements to the Canterbury Museum which keeps records of such finds. The ocean sunfish, whose scientific name is mola mola, was not rare, said a museum spokesman, Mr lan Mannering.