Monday September 15, 2025
DAILY GALAXY —
A giant and rarely seen hoodwinker sunfish has washed up on a beach in northern California, baffling marine biologists and igniting curiosity among beachgoers. The species, Mola tecta, was first formally described just eight years ago and is almost never observed in the Northern Hemisphere.
The 6-foot-long fish, with its smooth, disc-shaped body and ghostly grey coloring, was discovered earlier this month on the sands of Doran Regional Park in Bodega Bay, about 70 miles (112.65 km) north of San Francisco. Its sudden appearance has challenged existing scientific assumptions about the species’ distribution and raised fresh questions about changing ocean conditions.
A Stunning Find by Chance During a Sunday Beach Cleanup
The discovery was made on September 7 by Stefan Kiesbye, a local resident, novelist, and professor at Sonoma State University, who routinely spends his weekends collecting litter along the shoreline. While walking the beach, Kiesbye spotted what he initially believed to be a deceased sea lion lying about 50 feet from the surf.
“It was so enormous and so weird and gorgeous,” Kiesbye told The Press Democrat. “It’s like suddenly you’re on another planet.”
Upon closer inspection, it was clear this was not a mammal, but an unusually shaped fish—one he later identified with the help of Google as a hoodwinker sunfish, a species many seasoned marine scientists have yet to see in person.
First Described in 2017, Mola Tecta Remains Largely Mysterious
Hoodwinker sunfish (Mola tecta) is part of the Molidae family, known for producing the heaviest bony fish on Earth. Adult specimens can weigh up to 4,400 pounds (2 t) and stretch as long as 9 feet (2.74 meters), although the fish found in Bodega Bay was slightly smaller.
The species was formally described in 2017 by a research team led by Dr. Marianne Nyegaard of Murdoch University in Perth, Australia. Nyegaard had spent years analyzing genetic samples and morphological features before concluding that what had long been mistaken for juvenile Mola mola (the more commonly seen ocean sunfish) was, in fact, a distinct species.
Unlike its cousin, Mola tecta lacks the protruding snout and chin bump seen in mature Mola mola. It has a smoother body profile, with shorter clavus and a more subtle head contour. The species had previously been recorded off New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, and occasionally near Peru—but never this far north.
“This is a huge surprise,” Dr. Nyegaard told SFGATE. “We didn’t think they crossed the equator, or if they did, only very rarely.”
From Shark Reports to Sunfish Surprise
Interestingly, local park rangers initially responded to public reports of shark sightings near the jetty at Doran Regional Park. But what people had seen swimming offshore turned out to be sunfish, likely a small group of Mola tecta individuals.
Later that weekend, one of them was found beached. Melanie Gutierrez, a ranger with Sonoma County Regional Parks, arrived on site to find a crowd of visitors attempting to push the fish back into the water. Their efforts were in vain—the animal died shortly after being stranded.
According to Ariana Reguzzoni, spokesperson for the regional parks department, photos revealed what appeared to be an injury on the sunfish’s fin, though it’s unclear whether this contributed to its stranding. The Bodega Marine Laboratory, part of the University of California, Davis, has since collected samples from the carcass for further research.
A Rare Event With Broader Ecological Implications
Beaching events involving sunfish are not unheard of, but they remain poorly understood. These pelagic fish, which typically dwell in open ocean, occasionally strand on beaches worldwide for reasons scientists are still investigating. Possible causes range from navigational errors and temperature shock to underlying illness or injury.
Dr. Nyegaard, who remains one of the world’s foremost experts on sunfish species, believes the increasing number of northern sightings may be tied to changing ocean currents, possibly driven by climate variability. She suggests Mola tecta may be diving deep beneath the equatorial warm belt, using colder waters to navigate northward.
“We still don’t know much about what triggers strandings,” she said. “But sightings like this are valuable—they give us rare opportunities to collect data and test hypotheses about their behavior and distribution.”
As per Sonoma County Parks, the sunfish carcass will be left undisturbed, allowing natural decomposition to return nutrients to the coastal ecosystem—a standard approach for handling marine wildlife deaths in protected areas.