Volusia Deputy Saves Giant Stranded Ocean Sunfish

It’s not every day local law enforcement comes into contact with one of the largest fish on Earth, but that’s exactly what happened this week for a deputy with the Volusia Sheriff’s Office. Deputy Urquhart encountered a mola mola, commonly known as an ocean sunfish, stranded at the shore near a pier in Volusia County.

Video from Deputy Urquhart’s bodycam shows the enormous creature lying on its side where the ocean meets dry land, dark colored and scarcely moving. Though many would be clueless to try and save the oceanic giant, Urquhart stepped into the shallow water to try and help. Fortunately, despite their gargantuan size, ocean sunfish are completely harmless to humans.

“This is really rough, it’s like sandpaper,” Urquhart can be heard saying as he grasps the fish’s clavus. “It’s like spiky sandpaper back here.” Once he is able to establish a grip, Urquhart begins pulling the sunfish by its long dorsal fin. With its smaller pectoral fin the sunfish attempts to move under its own power, but is unable to do so in the mere inches of water it found itself in.

Urquhart begins to shimmy the fish backward toward deeper water, noting in the video how heavy it is. Sunfish at their largest can grow to be over two and a half tons – the only heavier fish in the world are four species of shark and the giant oceanic manta ray. The mola mola’s close relative, the mola alexandrini or giant sunfish of the Southern Hemisphere, is the only fish with a bony skeleton that weighs in heavier.

After Urquhart’s efforts to haul the fish by hand prove futile, he returns to the VSO’s patrol boat to retrieve a length of rope, which he ties around the sunfish’s body. After using the rope to give one final pull, the majestic creature was pulled to deep enough water to begin swimming again on its own, at which point it set off back to the open ocean.

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The Bizarre and Enormous Mola Mola

Mola Mola, better known as ocean sunfish or common mola, are enormous docile fish known to appear in all of the world’s oceans. One of the most unique fish in the sea, mola mola are nearly unrecognizable from the body features of most oceanic fish.  They have a large, round body with one long dorsal and anal fin each extending from their back and underbelly. Instead of a caudal fin, the ‘tail fin’ used by most fish for propulsion through the water, the mola mola has a rigid clavus which it can use only gently to steer itself. Its smaller pectoral fins can be flapped to help them move, but their normal recorded speed is just under two miles per hour.

The strangeness of Deputy Urquhart’s mola mola encounter on the shores of Volusia County owes to the fact that the species is most commonly seen well offshore. They’re known to travel by drifting along ocean currents, a behavior which could prove dangerous if they swim close to shorebreak. The mola mola’s diet consists mainly of juvenile fish, squid, crustaceans, and jellyfish. Their young start out at only 2.5 millimeters at birth, before growing to nearly eleven feet from fin to fin.

Though predation on the fish is rare, they have been documented as a food source for sharks, orca whales, and sea lions. Ocean sunfish are listed as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), one step above endangered. Their consumption is banned in the European Union, but legal in the United States. They are most commonly eaten in East Asia.