Have you met the Ocean Sunfish? I just did. It’s a gigantic, hilarious, stupidly created, fish. And I cannot stop giggling at it, which is a first for over 4 months. This giant, waste of space, floats around because it cannot use its tiny fin to propel its self. Scientists really don’t understand how or why this thing survives. In reality it is the worlds largest bony fish, a flat fish, and also called the Mola Mola. It cannot defend its self and despite being a monstrous fish, it is not a predator. Their teeth are fused. In reality the only thing that can eat it [even though it is bony, nutritionally useless, and rather oddly shaped] are sea lions [who prefer to bite and play with them], sharks [who could really eat basically anything else, but I assume lazy or dumb sharks can catch these since they can’t run away], and killer whales [I mean killer is in their name]. If they float to the top of the ocean, they create a nice mini island for birds to land on. Otherwise they kinda dive themselves way down to eat.
So how do they perpetuate if they can’t do much, run away, or even properly mate. They actually produce the most eggs each time out of any other fish. In the world. 300 million at a time. So at least one is going to make it, proportionally speaking.
But the best part is they consume really only one thing, [actually a few things, but I don’t care about the small fish and crustaceans] JELLYFISH. So why do I and you care? Because a stupid giant Portuguese Man O’ War Jellyfish [Physalia actually] is what started my latest CRPS flair up. Really this and long neck turtles are the only thing that destroy the real ocean monsters. Man O Wars [blue bottles] are native in warmer waters [think Australia] but really can go anywhere. They grow up to 165 ft tentacles, and have both bacterial colonies acting as tentacle stinging cells and neurotoxin filled cells closer to their bodies. Plus they swarm in the thousands. The Australian Coast got hit these weekend, though why hundreds of people got stung instead of GETTING OUT OF THE WATER I won’t know. I suppose misery loves company. The real positive is that an Ocean Sunfish eats HUNDREDS of these suckers daily because they have relatively zero nutritionally content [talk about an actual wast of space, they do NOTHING for us, like mosquitoes]. I guess I will dumb these sort of jellies as MOSQUITOES OF THE OCEAN since they do nothing but cause pain and envenomate things. And the Ocean Sunfish, Mola Mola, should be the bats of the ocean [I mean that’s an insult to bats but it works].
I think I would like to start a fund to bring these giant saucers of the ocean around with me and send them into the seas ahead of beach goers to cleanse the water of the evil. Or maybe just surround myself with them while in the water.
Take a moment to look at all this awesome info on Mola Mola : https://www.aquarium.co.za/blog/entry/everything-you-need-to-know-about-ocean-sunfish
Life On Fire 