Big Fish
Mola Mola (Ocean Sunfish)
Mola mola · Bony fish, family Molidae
The sunfish looks like the ocean ran out of fish halfway through building one: a huge silver head that simply stops, finished off with a scalloped rudder where the tail should be. Then it moves, and the joke dies: a big mola sculls past with unhurried authority, an eye the size of a plum tracking you, on its way to hang tilted at a cleaning station while bannerfish groom it like pit crew. Bali's cold-upwelling season delivers the world's most reliable encounters, strange gray giants materializing out of thermocline haze at Crystal Bay. It remains one of diving's oddest and most coveted sightings: a deep-sea jellyfish-eater moonlighting as a wall ornament.
Wo und wann man eines sieht
„Resident" bedeutet, dass die meisten Tauchgänge am jeweiligen Tauchziel eine Begegnung erwarten lassen; „saisonal" bedeutet, dass die Art in den genannten Monaten zuverlässig anzutreffen ist; alles andere ist ein Bonus, keine Planungsgrundlage.
| Ziel | Zuverlässigkeit | Monate | Hinweise |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bali & Nusa PenidaIndonesia | Seasonal: reliable in season | Jul–Oct | |
| Galápagos IslandsEcuador | Occasional | Ganzjährig | |
| The AzoresPortugal | Occasional | Jun–Sep | |
| California Channel IslandsUnited States | Occasional | Jul–Oct |
Bester Monat auf einen Blick
| Monat | Zuverlässige Reiseziele |
|---|---|
| January | Galápagos Islands |
| February | Galápagos Islands |
| March | Galápagos Islands |
| April | Galápagos Islands |
| May | Galápagos Islands |
| June | Galápagos Islands · The Azores |
| July | Bali & Nusa Penida · Galápagos Islands · The Azores · California Channel Islands |
| August | Bali & Nusa Penida · Galápagos Islands · The Azores · California Channel Islands |
| September | Bali & Nusa Penida · Galápagos Islands · The Azores · California Channel Islands |
| October | Bali & Nusa Penida · Galápagos Islands · California Channel Islands |
| November | Galápagos Islands |
| December | Galápagos Islands |
Sie verstehen
Lebensraum: Open ocean through the water column; rises to cleaning stations on reef walls and basks flat at the surface after cold deep dives
Verbreitung: Temperate and tropical oceans worldwide; diver encounters cluster at Bali's channel reefs, the Mediterranean, California, and the Azores
Verhalten: A vertical dinner-plate of a fish that flaps along on dorsal and anal fins, yaws like a badly trimmed kite, and queues at cleaning stations where bannerfish pick its parasites. Surface basking (lying flat, side up) warms it after deep foraging. Utterly placid around divers unless crowded off the station.
Ernährung: Jellyfish and other gelatinous plankton, plus small fish and zooplankton, a low-calorie diet consumed in bulk
Größe: typischerweise rund 1.8 m; dokumentiert bis zu 3.3 m (total length; among the heaviest bony fishes, with big animals beyond a tonne. Bali's famous 'mola' is now identified as the bump-head sunfish, Mola alexandrini).
Wie man sich in ihrer Nähe verhält
Nusa Penida's code of conduct is the model: stay behind the reef line at cleaning stations, minimum distances, no flash barrages, no bubbles beneath a cleaning fish, and never chase a departing mola; it won't come back that day.
Naturschutz
Vulnerable: vast numbers die as bycatch in drift and set nets worldwide; its slow-motion surface basking makes it easy accidental catch.
Bekannte Tauchplätze dafür
Hervorgehobene Tauchplätze wurden von unseren Redakteuren für diese Art kartiert; die Zahlen sind GBIF-Vorkommensdatensätze, die seit 1990 im Umkreis von etwa 5 km um einen Tauchplatz protokolliert wurden.
Ansehen
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