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Beachgoers were daze when a massive , 7 - foot - long ( 2 measure ) fish with a round body , huge fins and bulging eyes washed up along the seashore of Oregon .
An expert identify the tremendous mintage as a hoodwinker sunfish ( Mola tecta ) , which is one of the largest bony Pisces the Fishes in the humanity and is rarely seen in the Northern Hemisphere .
The carcass of the hoodwinker fish that appeared on Gearhart beach on June 3.
Seaside Aquariumreceived report of the prominent , circular fish notice on the beach in Gearhart , a small town around 80 miles ( 130 km ) northwest of Portland , on June 3 . This soul could be the orotund of this metal money ever sampled , allot to aFacebook postfrom Seaside Aquarium .
After news emerge about the giant fish , Marianne Nyegaard , a marine biologist in New Zealand who was involve in the discovery of M. tecta , reached out to Seaside Aquarium and identified it as a uncommon hoodwinker sunfish .
Seaside Aquarium interpreter confirmed this after collecting photos , measuring and tissue paper samples of the Pisces . The rinse - up specimen measured 7.3 feet ( 2.2 m ) long , clear it perhaps the largest of its species ever to be try out .
Other species from the genusMolar, have ridges and grooves along their bodies, the hoodwinker sunfish has a smooth body.
The hoodwinker sunfish is one of three coinage of sunfish in the genusMola . The other two are the sea sunfish ( Mola mola ) , which is the most abundant of the three mintage , and the swelling - head headfish ( Mola alexandrini ) . All three species can grow to about 11 feet ( 3.3 meters ) in length and weigh up to 2.3 piles ( 2,300 kilograms ) , accord to theAmerican Museum of Natural History .
Sunfish feed between depths of 660 and 2,000 metrical foot ( 200 to 600 m ) , where they eat jellyfish , small Pisces and crustacean . While hunting , temperatures can drop to less than 10 degrees celsius . They are occasionally seen sunbathing close to the ocean surface to regulate their body temperature after hunt down nose dive , according to a2015study .
Unlike the other species from the genusMolar , which have ridges and grooves along their bodies , the hoodwinker sunfish has a smooth body and clavus — the duncical , skinned lobe at the back of its body that act as a rudder to steer while swimming .
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It is uncertain where the hoodwinker sunfish came from or why it washed up on Gearhart beach .
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The sea sunfish and bump - head sunfish are far-flung across the world in temperate and tropic sea , but the hoodwinker sunfish was once reckon to experience only in the Southern Hemisphere , according tooceansunfish.org , and are found mostly inAustralia , New Zealand and South Africa .
However , rare sightings as far Union asCaliforniaandAlaskahave challenged this idea . It is unknown how far these sunfish traveled , if they migrated or whether these incidents present an unnamed universe in the area .
Nyegaard and colleaguesdescribedM. tectaas a new species in 2017 , after it had been mistaken for the most abundant mola , M. mola , for decade .
The combination of rare sighting , the difficulty of storing specimens and misidentified cases led this trickster coinage to be named the hoodwinker . The coinage name , " tecta , " is derived from the Latin news " tectus , " which means " disguised " or " obscure , " according to the study .
