Saving Seafood

Researchers Report Spike in Ocean Sunfish Strandings

November 8, 2019 — Marine researchers are reporting a spike in sunfish strandings this fall as waters continue to cool off Cape Cod.

Ocean sunfish, also known as mola mola, is one of the heaviest known bony fishes in the world. Adult sunfish typically weight between 550 and 2,200 pounds.

It is a unique shape and resembles a fish head with a tail and has a mainly flat body.

As the sunfish are migrating south to warmer waters they can get trapped and cold stunned, mainly in Cape Cod Bay, similar to what happens with sea turtles.

Marine biologist Carol “Krill” Carson, the president of the New England Coastal Wildlife Alliance, said sunfish strandings average between 20 and 40 per season, and there have been 135 carcasses documented this year.

“This year is our busiest season and we have exceeded all previous seasons already,” Carson said. “The stranding season hasn’t even ended.”

The sunfish stranding season typically runs from mid-August through the end of December.

“It’s been a really bad season for ocean sunfish,” Carson said.

Read the full story at CapeCod.com

Giant Bony Fish Being Found Stranded on N.E. Beaches

April 19, 2019 — The ocean sunfish earned its moment in the spotlight in 2015, when a viral video surfaced of a foul-mouthed recreational fisherman who observed a specimen along the Massachusetts coastline and excitedly tried to guess what it was as the fish calmly rested at the surface.

The largest bony fish, the pie-shaped creature is certainly an oddity to those who are unfamiliar with it — they bask on their side on the water’s surface and can grow to nearly 11 feet and weigh up to 5,000 pounds by eating almost exclusively jellyfish.

Like whales, however, they also sometimes become stranded on beaches or in shallow tidal areas, where they are unable to extricate themselves and die. Almost 350 of them have stranded along the New England coast since 2008, according to Michael Rizzo of the New England Coastal Wildlife Alliance, who studies the species.

Read the full story at EcoRI News

El Niño is Going to Starve a Lot of Fish

October 14, 2015 — When Joe Orsi goes trawling, he doesn’t go trawling for 900-pound ocean sunfish. Orsi’s title is biologist, his employer the NOAA Alaska Fisheries Research Center, his cause researching said state’s fisheries. His typical prey, therefore, are juvenile Alaskan salmon. Sunfish are tropical—occasionally temperate—creatures, and do not belong about 40 miles offshore of a place called Icy Point. But that’s what Orsi’s nets brought up in June.

“What’s crazy is, like a day before, a guy asked me what was the strangest thing I’d brought up in a trawl,” says Orsi. Whatever he answered then—sea otter, Dall’s porpoise, maybe a blue shark—is certainly obsolete now.

Strange things are aswim along the Pacific coast. Starving sea lion pups, jellyfish swarms, toxic algae blooms. All because of an enormous mass of warm water stretching from California to Alaska that scientists have dubbed “the Blob.” And the Blob is about to get joined by more warm water from the gargantuan El Niño—with its own scientific nickname, “Godzilla“—forming in the equatorial east Pacific. When these monster warm water systems eventually meet, they aren’t just going to bring charming equatorial fish on subarctic vacations. They’re probably going to deliver a generation (or several generations) of scrawny fish to the oceans.

Read the full story from Wired

Fish Gets Most Boston Reaction Ever

September 23, 2015 — What happens when a couple of Bostonians come across a giant fish in the ocean? Why hilarity, of course.

Like a Saturday Night Live mashup of Good Will Hunting and Deadliest Catch, this clip of a Massachusetts native’s expletive-laced incredulous exclaiming as he follows what appears to be an ocean sunfish around will make you want a Wahlburger, a cup of Dunkin’ and a Red Sox hat in a fu–in’ instant.

Read the full story and watch the video at The Daily Beast

Male Fish in North Carolina Rivers Found to Have Female Parts

August 30, 2015 –Male black bass and some sunfish in North Carolina rivers and streams are developing eggs in their testes, which can cause reproductive problems and potentially threaten populations, according to unpublished research.

The research adds to growing evidence that exposure to estrogen compounds is feminizing male fish across the U.S. and suggests that North Carolina fish might be particularly at risk.

“It’s a very interesting study and certainly adds to our understanding of what’s potentially going on in our rivers and with the intersex fish,” said Vicki Blazer, a U.S. Geological Survey fish biologist who was not involved in the study.

North Carolina State University researchers tested 20 streams and rivers throughout North Carolina during the 2012 spawning season for contaminants known to disrupt endocrine systems, such as industrial chemicals and pesticides. They also tested black bass – largemouth and smallmouth bass – and sunfish in the rivers for “intersex” characteristics, looking for eggs in the testes of males.

Read the full story from Truthout