Rare 7-foot fish washed ashore on Oregon’s coast garners worldwide attention

GEARHART, Ore. — A huge rare fish that was thought to live only in temperate waters in the Southern Hemisphere has washed up on the northern coast of Oregon, attracting crowds of curious onlookers intrigued by the unusual sight.

The 7-foot-long sunfish made its first appearance on the beach in Gearhart, the Seaside Aquarium said in a news release. It was still on the beach Friday and could remain there for weeks, the aquarium said, because it is difficult for scavengers to pierce its tough skin.

Photos from the aquarium showed a flat, round, gray fish lying on its side in the sand. Photos of a person kneeling next to it, and another of a pickup truck parked next to it, gave a sense of its grand scale and scope.

The uproar it caused on social media prompted a New Zealand researcher who has studied sunfish to contact the aquarium. After reviewing photos of the fish, Marianne Nyegaard was able to confirm that it was indeed a sunfish – rarer than the more common sunfish – and said she believed it may be the largest species of fish ever sampled, according to the aquarium.

In research published in 2017, Nyegaard discovered through genetic sampling and observation that the sunfish, or Mola tecta, was a different species from the sunfish, Mola mola. “Tecta” means hidden or disguised in Latin, referring to a new species that “hid in plain sight,” the aquarium said.

A hoodwinker sunfish washed up on the coast of California in 2019. It also recently washed up again in California and Alaska, disputing the theory that it only lives in the Southern Hemisphere, the aquarium said. It is also likely that the fish washed up in other parts of the Pacific Northwest, but was mistaken for the more common sunfish at the time, the aquarium added.