S29. Experience a Rare Spectacle: A 50kg Moonfish Emerges on the Shoreline, Entrancing Onlookers with its Majestic Aura and Signaling an Unusual Coastal Event. S29

USA: Discovery of sunfish weighing 45kg, drifting on the beach, extremely rare – Photo 1.

Dead sunfish washed up on the US coast.

Seaside Aquarium in the city of the same name in the state of Oregon said a local person discovered a fish with a strange shape, weighing 45 kg on Sunset beach and reported it to the authorities, according to Newsweek.

After seeing photos of the “strange fish”, aquarium staff immediately arrived to recover the fish’s body. Seaside Aquarium identified this as a rare sunfish. Almost the entire body of the fish is covered with orange scales, unlike the normal sunfish which has a silver body.

“The fish stirred up the atmosphere at the aquarium, many people came to see this beautiful and strange fish,” Seaside Aquarium posted a message on Facebook. The aquarium plans to invite groups of students to dissect the fish.

This activity will be conducted in partnership with the Columbia River Maritime Museum. The fish will be frozen until the new school year begins.

USA: Discovered extremely rare sunfish weighing 45kg, drifting on the beach – Photo 3.

The sunfish that drifted along the US coast weighed 45kg.

“Finding a sunfish on a beach like that is extremely rare,” Lynn Mattes, with the Marine Resources Program at the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, told Newsweek.

Anglers in the Oregon state sometimes catch sunfish. The last time the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife took a sample from a sunfish was in 2015, Mattes added.

In 2009, a man caught a sunfish about 60km upstream of the Columbia River. This man brought the fish to a restaurant near his home in Washington and asked to have it cooked. This person said “the sunfish dish is very delicious”.