Massive Two-Ton Fish Species Discovered

typhlonectes:

A new species of enormous ocean sunfish was discovered after an intensive search, making it the first species of this type of fish to be identified in 130 years.

Despite being the largest bony fish in the world and weighing more
than two tons, sunfish are quite elusive, which made the four-year
search difficult.

A team of researchers led by Marianne Nyegaard, a PhD student at
Murdoch University in Australia, analyzed more than 150 sunfish DNA
samples and recognized four distinct species—but only three of the
species had been previously identified.

The research team decided to call the
species the hoodwinker sunfish, Mola tecta, which comes from the
Latin word tectus, meaning hidden.It wasn’t until a year after this
breakthrough that Nyegaard was able to see a hoodwinker sunfish up
close. In 2014, she got a tip from a New Zealand fishery that four
sunfish had washed up on a beach in Christchurch, and she flew down to
see the evidence for herself.

Massive Two-Ton Fish Species Discovered