Record size bony fish found floating dead near Azores archipelago

Bob Yirka is a research scientist at Phys.org.

A team of researchers affiliated with multiple institutions in Portugal, working with a colleague from New Zealand and another from Japan, has released a report detailing an extremely large ocean sunfish that was found floating near to Faial Island. The group describes features of the huge fish and its probable cause of death in a paper published in the journal of fish biology.

Fishermen working off the coast of Faial Island found the carcass of a large fish floating on the sea. They pulled it from the water and took it to shore. The fish was found to be a southern sunfish. The fishermen reported what they found to the association.

A group of people went to the dock to see the fish. The researchers weighed the fish after it was measured and dragged onto a scale. It was the largest fish ever recorded.

The sunfish has a large fin. There are many parts of the world where the southern sunfish live. The sunfish has an odd habit of laying sideways on the surface of the sea in the shade of the sun. The fish warms itself after diving into cold water. Sunfish eat a lot of different things, but have also eaten squid, fish, crustaceans, and small fish.

A large dent in the fish's head was found to be the cause of its death. The team thinks it was caused by a collision with a ship. They cut the fish open so they could look at its stomach and suck it up.

More information: José Nuno Gomes‐Pereira et al, The heaviest bony fish in the world: a 2744 kg giant sunfish Mola alexandrini (Ranzani, 1839) from the North Atlantic, Journal of Fish Biology (2022). DOI: 10.1111/jfb.15244 Journal information: Journal of Fish Biology

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