A massive common mola fish has been spotted on two separate instances off New Jersey in recent days, with users filming the creature in Barnegat Bay.
Instagram user Tony Siragusa published a video of the fish, with a man seen swimming alongside the creature in apparent attempt to help it turn around as it appeared to become trapped off a local jetty.
Separately, the Facebook page of Jersey Shore Hurricane News posted a video filmed by a local resident showing an ocean sunfish, perhaps the same one, flapping its fin over the water as it swam around Ortley Beach.
The videos have racked up tens of thousands of views and hundreds of comments, mostly expressing bewilderment, in the space of about 24 hours.
Sightings of ocean sunfish are uncommon outside ocean areas. The species of fish has been described as ‘a fish head with a tail’, and has a pancake-like flattened body, with the fish known to regularly make its way to the surface to bask in the sunlight, during which time it turns itself sideways. During its time on the surface, the fish allows seabirds to land on its body and feed on parasites. The common mola is also a deep ocean hunter, known to submerge to depths of up to 600 meters in search of small fish, squid, crustaceans and sea jellies. The fish can grow up to 3.3 meters in length, and 4.2 meters across fin to fin, and with an average weight of around 1,000 kg, is one of the heaviest species of bony fish in the world.
