The enormous size of this sunfish made biologists unable to weigh it

(CNN Spanish) – “It was known that there were sunfish of these dimensions, but we had never seen them,” said Enrique Ostalé Riveras, coordinator of the Marine Biology station at the University of Seville in the Strait of Ceuta in dialogue with CNN en Español. “We had seen it in a book and in scientific articles and having it there really impressed me a lot.”

When the fishermen reported the huge find, the researchers came and verified its size: 2.9 meters long, 3.2 meters high, according to Ostalé Riveras.

However, when inquiring about its weight, it was impossible to find out with certainty. The fish was so large that the available instruments became obsolete. To lift it they had to install two cranes on fishing boats.

“The first thing we think is that it was larger than the normal that we had seen in previous samplings,” said Ostalé Riveras. The researchers took photos, measurements and could not verify the weight because the scale, with a capacity of 1,000 kilograms, “was going to break,” said the researcher.

“You have to think that a difficult and dangerous maneuver because we were in several boats, the animal weighs a lot, you have to move it from the codend area of ​​the net to the open sea and that is why we used the crane to remove it,” he commented.

? We get more images of the sunfish that researchers from the US have studied ➡️ https://t.co/HJul9Bg3oU

?The specimen, weighing more than 1,000 kg, was found in the waters of Ceuta trapped in the nets of a trap. It could be released and returned to the sea. pic.twitter.com/bilvKx7Wn3

– unisevilla (@unisevilla) October 15, 2021

The animal was found in a trap fishing, an ancient fishing technique in which a net is used to catch fish that migrate and become trapped, according to Ostalé Riveras. The fishermen then select the fish they are interested in and return other species to the sea, such as turtles, stingrays or, in this case, sunfish.

They installed a “spaghetti” for the sunfish

Researchers at the University of Seville in Ceuta studied the population dynamics of the sunfish in Ceuta four years ago. Every year they take a sample of weight, size and DNA, and this time the surprise was the discovery of the great fish, of the mola alexandrini species, according to Ostalés Riveras.

The studies are carried out “to differentiate with morphological and genetic precision between the two species Mola mola and Mola alexandrini”, says the University of Seville.

The researchers identified this fish by its morphology: the front part of its head “is more robust, more bulky”, according to Ostalés, and the area of ​​the tail or tail fin is less robust, a difference “to the naked eye” with respect to other species of sunfish. But genetic studies still need to be done.

“In the end we always do genetic studies to identify it well because morphologically, because there can be confusion and mix the species. That is why genetic analysis is very important in this type of study,” added the researcher.

“We were lucky in the aspect that it was difficult to handle with the two cranes, because you have to think that we are on a ship, that we are in the middle of the sea and there can always be an accident and there was none. So everything has turned out very well , the truth, “said the researcher.

Before returning this individual to the sea, the scientists installed a “spaghetti”, a mark to track the sunfish and if someone else finds it, they can contact the University of Seville and they can know the distance and distance of that fish.

Ostalés Riveras says he feels lucky to have found it, as he says, it is novel to find a fish of such size in this part of the world.

“We were lucky to find him and to find him alive and to enjoy him and swim with him,” he said.