Introduction
In the ocean, where undiscovered mysteries are lying deep below, many questions lie unanswered. You turn to see this large creature and ask, “WHAT THE HECK IS THAT!?” With such a large fish, many questions pop in your mind. What is it? How does it survive? What does it even do?
History
When it comes to the Ocean Sunfish, its history is not a mystery. The Ocean Sunfish is a distant relative to the porcupinefish and the pufferfish and close relative of the spikefish. Its other relatives include the Boxfish,Triggerfish, and the Filefish. The Ocean Sunfish is considered pretty new when it comes to evolution, only appearing 50 million years ago, although that isn’t very “new” to us. It is shocking how it came from such a long line of small fish, which makes you wonder how all its relatives ever even created such a large fish.
Habitat
The Ocean Sunfish is mostly found in temperate and tropical places, such as the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. The Ocean Sunfish sightings are mostly in the British Aisles and the North Sea during the summer, but these fish are actually all over the globe.
The Ocean Sunfish is ectothermic, which means it can’t raise its body heat to stay warm, so you would think they would stay close to the surface and remain in the warm water. While you would be somewhat correct in thinking this way, you’d also be wrong. The Ocean Sunfish, not caring about the laws of nature, swims down to the lower and cold depths of the sea called the midnight zone just because it wants a specific snack, such as the gelatinous plantain. However, it knows it can’t stay there for too long, so it comes up to the surface to get some sun, hence the name Sunfish. (Imagine risking everything just to get yourself a yummy snack!) Now, the Ocean Sunfish does this multiple times a day, which is a skill many fish can’t do without dying because of their insides, which will be explained later.
Size/Features
The Ocean Sunfish is very weirdly shaped, as if the universe has given up on figuring out how to build it. The body of the Ocean Sunfish is flat and circular. They have a strange tail-like stump on the back with two fins, one on the top and one on the bottom. Despite its strange shape, it can grow to a massive size, but its size depends on the type of Sunfish it is. For example, the Slender Sunfish is the smallest of its sunfish kind, only growing up to 3.3 feet, while its brothers and sisters range from 6-11 feet or maybe even larger, perhaps growing up to be the size of a small car. With the Ocean Sunfish being able to grow up so large, you would expect them to be as big as babies, but Ocean Sunfish are actually born very small and most don’t survive before or after their birth due to predators.
The inside of the Ocean Sunfish’s body is also very strange. Instead of having a swim bladder, an organ many fish have that they use to keep afloat, the Ocean Sunfish has a layer of flesh, almost jelly-like, that is mostly 90% water so they can dive or surface. Sadly, this means that it isn’t very agile. Due to their strange insides, most of their organs are bunched together in one place. Another strange feature this fish has is its mouth. It has parrot-like teeth, which are always open so it can eat food for long periods of time without stopping.
Diet
The Ocean Sunfish, while known to be very dumb, is actually very smart when it comes to food. When the Sunfish is young, it needs to grow quickly to survive, so it needs to eat as much as possible in order to not get eaten by predators. In doing so, the Ocean Sunfish grows to realize that there is small food available to eat that other predators aren’t interested in due to its size and how easy such food is to catch. The Sunfish uses its large eyes to see small, soft animals, like squid, shrimp, and starfish. Its favorite food of all time, however, is the jellyfish.
Fun Facts
- The Ocean Sunfish’s scientific name is the Mola Mola.
- The largest Sunfish ever found was 10 feet long, 11 feet wide, making it as heavy as a large SUV.
- The Ocean Sunfish is really boney, so the meat on its body isn’t very good and most creatures who try to eat it immediately spit it out and swim away, which explains why people mostly see Ocean Sunfish with bite marks all over them.
- Since the Ocean Sunfish moves so slowly, it’s prone to getting infested with barnacles and other parasites.
- When you see an Ocean Sunfish on the surface of the water, it’s often there to sunbathe to warm up from cold dives, but it can also be there to attract sea birds, like albatrosses, which eat the parasites off the Sunfish’s body. Sadly, this can lead to the death of the Sunfish since boat accidents happen due to the driver not being able to see the Sunfish and the Sunfish can’t react in time or at all.
- The Ocean Sunfish, while having a terrible taste, does have predators, such as sharks, sea lions, and some orcas, although the orcas aren’t completely considered a predator of the Ocean Sunfish.
- The Ocean Sunfish can carry 300 million eggs and sometimes even more. (That’s a lot!)
Conclusion
The Ocean Sunfish is truly a special fish to learn about: it’s a bit odd but has many features that can surprise you. I hope you learned a lot of new and interesting things about the Ocean Sunfish and now have a fondness for these strange and wonderful creatures.
Works Cited:
The Dumbest Animal Alive. (2025, September 2). YouTube. Retrieved November 25, 2025, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtDKKJq9u30
The Insane Biology of: The Sunfish. (2023, July 8). YouTube. Retrieved November 25, 2025, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEj8bnx0TB0
Griffin, B. (n.d.). Mola Mola. Mola mola (Ocean Sunfish) | INFORMATION | Animal Diversity Web. https://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Mola_mola/#:~:text=Ocean%20sunfish%2C%20Mola%20mola%20%2C%20are,tropical%20oceans%20across%20the%20globe.
