Photo of the Day ~ Juvenile Mola Mola - Mission Blue

February 21, 2013

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One of the ocean's oddest looking fish, the Mola Mola possesses a truly bizarre body shape, likened to a gigantic ‘swimming head.'  Female sunfish are known to produce up to 300 million eggs at one time, the largest number of eggs ever recorded in a vertebrate.

Where and when the sunfish spawns is not well known, although five possible areas have been identified in the North and South Atlantic, the North and South Pacific, and in the Indian Ocean, where there are central rotating oceanic currents, called gyres. The newly hatched sunfish measure just 0.25 centimetres in length, and will increase in mass by over 60 million times in order to reach the size of a 3 metre adult.

Photo: (c) Sailroe

 

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