Swimming with a Mola Mola

A first for me!



 

Sincerely,

Jim

Real cool.  I didn't know much about them so I looked up mola mola on  wikipedia  and found they eat mostly jelly fish and grow fast!!

"Ocean sunfish may live up to ten years in captivity, but their lifespan in a natural habitat has not yet been determined.[21] Their growth rate is also undetermined. However, it is known that a young specimen at the Monterey Bay Aquarium increased in weight from 26 to 399 kg (57 to 880 lb) and reached a height of nearly 1.8 m (5.9 ft) in fifteen months"

Love It!

Thanks for the cool video Jim.

Nice!  I thought you were gonna get right up on it and latch on, but those guys can obviously go faster when they want to.   

With Big Jim in pursuit, it made me wonder how they taste! 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SunfishDish1_2.jpg

With Big Jim in pursuit, it made me wonder how they taste! 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SunfishDish1_2.jpg

Seals like em.  Was over by canary row a couple years back and some seals bit the back off one and were playing frisbee with it.  After the seals left, the Mola Mola was left floating to get picked at by birds

Way cool !!! I saw my first one the other day on a party boat out of port San Luis.

Jim they are really cool fish, you were very fortunate that day. I have seen a few on the surface and they make appearances in my dreams from time to time 

very cool vid

Had one float by a couple months ago...  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the big fin sticking out of the water and had the willies for a moment before I realized what it was!

  Very cool,,,  I think there's a lot around here lately.
      I was on a mothership trip at Cortez Banks years ago.  I very nervously swam right up to  one that must have been 6' diameter!    It seemed very docile as it slowly moved away.

Cool vid Jim thanks for sharing

I saw one while scuba diving the Channel Islands probably 15 years ago. Was having trouble with a dive and had to abort and go to the surface. Was probably 150 yards from the boat which made for a long surface swim back. Half way back to the boat I caught a glimpse of some grayish figure looming directly beneath me about 40 ft. Scared the SHIT out of me for a second  Thought it was a Great White coming up on me to toss me around like a furbag 

Luckily for me it was just a Mola Mola about the size of a truck hood. I followed it for a bit since we were going in the same direction 

Still very vivid in my mind to this day.

Cool vid. It's fins remind me of a Mirage Drive.

Saw a ton of em last time I was salmon fishing. One was the size of the dinner table! They get over 2200lbs! I googled them. It was pretty interesting stuff. They eat jelly fish. As mentioned earlier seals use em for sport. Often ripping off their fins and then leaving them to die... Hmmm, guess we're not the only creatures that kill for sport....