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Mola mola

    FIRST RESPONDERS

    Saving the Misfits of the Ocean

    Most Mola mola strandings on Cape Cod happen in Wellfleet Harbor

    By

    WELLFLEET — Every fall, Carol “Krill” Carson gets a little bit busier.

    Carson’s nonprofit, the New England Coastal Wildlife Alliance (NECWA), is the only organization in the region dedicated to rescuing and studying the oft-forgotten Mola mola, or ocean sunfish.

    Carol “Krill” Carson and intern Carly Burns keeping a sunfish hydrated as it’s towed into Cape Cod Bay. (Photo courtesy Carol Carson)

    The scientific name Mola mola refers to the fish’s rounded shape. Mola comes from the Latin word molidae, which means “millstone.” Described as the heaviest bony fish in the world, with adults reaching upwards of a ton, and on Carson’s website as “all head and no body,” some might see Mola molas as “misfits,” Carson says.

    But more often than they used to, she says, beachgoers recognize this strange, bulbous animal as one that needs her help.

    Since 2008, when Carson began studying the ocean sunfish, the number stranded here has risen dramatically. In 2008, NECWA performed eight rescues; last year, Carson recorded 110 rescues or necropsies of beached sunfish.

    Like many Outer Cape Cod humans, Mola molas are seasonal creatures, says Carson. They migrate north to Cape Cod Bay and the Gulf of Maine in summer before returning to more tropical waters for the winter. As they head south, many get trapped by the Cape’s hook and become “cold-stunned,” experiencing the marine life equivalent of hypothermia.

    With the Gulf of Maine warming faster than 99 percent of the global ocean, more and more sunfish are staying longer into the winter, resulting in more strandings, according to Carson.

    Most of the calls Carson gets about wayward sunfish report animals stranded in Wellfleet. She suspects this is because, as they follow the contours of the ocean floor, Wellfleet’s 4.5-mile-wide embayment offers an accidental welcome.

    Extreme low tides that ground sunfish before they can escape to deep water are one peril. Boat collisions and entanglements with fishing gear are other dangers, Carson says.

    Of the 39 strandings NECWA has responded to so far this year, 30 have been in Wellfleet — along the pier, on the landward side of Uncle Tim’s Bridge, near the Chequessett Neck dike, and along Indian Neck. Many times (in 22 of the 39 cases to date this season) the fish are dead by the time someone reports a stranding. These numbers will rise as the rescue season continues into December, Carson says.

    Because NECWA is based off-Cape in Middleborough, where Carson lives, it can take two hours to respond to a live stranding. So, she has built a network of volunteers and interns across the Cape who search common stranding areas to increase the odds of successful rescues. Of this fall’s 17 live sunfish strandings, 16 were successfully rescued.

    NECWA’s rescue technology isn’t advanced. “It’s a hula hoop I got from the thrift store,” Carson says. Rescuers fasten the sunfish to the hula hoop, which is cushioned by pool noodles. The contraption is then tied to a boat, sometimes a motorboat and sometimes a kayak, and the sunfish is towed out into Cape Cod Bay.

    Crews also sometimes hoist sunfish onto a foam mat called a Lily Pad to be pulled into the bay by a motorboat.

    Carson admits that the rescue strategies are homegrown. “I may be a good field biologist, but I’m not an engineer,” she says.

    Missions can take up to 12 hours depending on how many sunfish are found. One day this past September, rescuers spotted 10 sunfish stranded in Wellfleet Harbor.

    Carson says her organization has 15 volunteers plus two interns. But as the number of stranded sunfish increases, she is sounding a call to action. “We are desperate for more help,” Carson says. “Even someone to just throw us a bottle of water or a sandwich while we’re in the water.”

    Despite the local perils that Mola molas face, they are not endangered or threatened. While ocean sunfish is part of the cuisine in some Eastern Asian countries, American gastronomy has passed them up.

    A study conducted by NECWA in conjunction with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Aging and Growth Laboratory in Woods Hole indicated that most of the fish found in Cape Cod Bay are juveniles, Carson says. She hasn’t figured out why that is yet.

    Another mystery among the dead sunfish: most of them are males. This week Carly Burns, an intern with NECWA, found the first female washed ashore this season.

    “It was weird only seeing males,” said Burns, who is taking a semester off from the University of Maryland to join Carson’s team.

    Burns said she has grown to love these animals. “They are so funny,” she says.

    “I know it’s just a fish,” Carson says. “But it’s a fish with character.”

    THE SCUTTLEBUTT

    A Short Course on Dorsal Fins

    How to tell the great white shark’s fin from the others

    By

    We’re getting closer to our local waters being invaded by striped bass. An abundance of 20-to-24-inch bass have been in and around the Race, being caught on SP Swimmers, yellow Bombers, and cut bait. There are also a lot of mackerel and herring in the bay, and also in our harbor at the Horseshoe Cove. Squid are moving in as well in big numbers, so the food sources are clearly in great shape right now for the usual predators to come and eat.

    Mola mola fin.

    Still waiting for reports on flounder and tautog. But it certainly looks like a robust charter fishing season on the horizon, as captains are reporting lots of phone inquiries about fishing and whale watching trips. With the pandemic waning, people are ready to enjoy the outdoors.

    With summer soon upon us, the seals and great white sharks will also be arriving. In light of the high number of false shark sightings reported last year, it is time to go over the three most common fins we see in our waters and explain their distinct differences.

    We have three animals whose dorsal fins regularly break the surface of the water around here: the basking shark; the ocean sunfish, a.k.a. mola mola; and, of course, the great white shark.

    Basking Shark fin.

    The basking shark feeds on plankton, so it poses no threat to humans whatsoever — unless it physically runs into you. Its dorsal fin, although somewhat similar to the great white’s, has a very rounded-off apex, as opposed to the great white shark’s, which has a sharply pointed apex. The gill plates on the basking shark are also much larger and conspicuous than the great white’s. The basking shark’s gray-black coloration is fairly consistent top to bottom, while the great white is uniformly gray on its upper side, transitioning to white on its bottom side.

    The ocean sunfish or mola mola also has a triangular dorsal fin, which often breaks the surface of the water. Its dorsal fin, however, is very floppy. Observing an ocean sunfish from afar, you will notice the fin flop from side to side as it rides the currents.

    Greath White Shark fin.

    The great white cruises through the water at a higher speed than either the basking shark or sunfish, and its fin, with a higher amount of cartilage, remains stiff and perpendicular to the water.

    Whale watching is very good right now, with right whales shifting north and slightly west on their migratory path. On May 7, the Center for Coastal Studies aerial surveillance team detected 34 right whales in Massachusetts coastal waters, including six mother-calf pairs. This is down quite a bit from the 160 whales observed the previous week. Humpback whales and fin whales, however, are moving into the bay and down the backside beaches, feeding on the enormous number of herring and mackerel currently in our waters.

    ENVIRONMENT

    A Network of Local Friends of a Funny Looking Fish

    Feasting on jellyfish, some molas are stranded as waters chill

    By

    WELLFLEET — After a mysterious flopping in the water, a large dorsal fin emerges. You think: “shark!” But it turns out to be an ocean sunfish, Mola mola, leisurely swimming near the surface. These fish are among the strangest creatures our ocean has to offer. They are the heaviest bony fish in the world and can weigh a ton or more.

    Mola Mola
    Mola molas can weigh a ton or more. This 1910 photo was taken in California. (Photo P.V. Reyes)

    These unusual-looking animals typically migrate south to their overwintering grounds by the end of summer. But warming waters and an abundance of jellyfish — they have a predilection for the gelatinous invertebrates — mean that some are remaining here until fall and early winter. If they remain in New England for too long, as the water temperatures drop, they can become victims of cold-stunning, just as sea turtles do.

    Ocean sunfish got their common name because they are often observed basking or sunbathing on their sides. They are found globally in tropical and temperate waters and it is speculated that this behavior helps them regulate their body temperature, warming them up after deep dives for prey. It may also be that this basking allows birds to pick off some of the multitudes of parasites that cover them.

    Part of what makes these fish look so odd is their lack of a tail, so they have also been nicknamed “swimming heads.”

    Recreational boaters have seen many ocean sunfish in Cape Cod Bay and Wellfleet Harbor this year, and now, some of them are not making it safely to the south before they collide with boats, get entangled in fishing gear, or, more often, get trapped in low water during the Cape’s massive tides.

    No one knows how long it takes molas to reach their adult weights or how long they live. They are not a commercially important species, except in some Asian countries where parts of them are eaten. Very little is known about the distribution, diet, and behavior of ocean sunfish in New England. Carol “Krill” Carson, of Middleboro, founder and president of the New England Coastal Wildlife Alliance (NECWA), initiated a program to learn more about them.

    In 2005, Carson set up a “community sighting network” to get boaters, fishermen, and beachgoers to report sightings of sunfish offshore. Carson says she didn’t expect to receive reports of sunfish struggling in shallow waters or dead along the shore.

    Team Mola is the Alliance’s volunteer network, with members trained to respond to mola sightings. An Oct. 13 report in the Boston Globe made clear that contacting Carson’s group when you see a mola is preferable to calling the police. In Wareham, local police received so many calls about a mola sighted in a cove that the town’s natural resources officer had to put out a notice on social media advising people that the animal was fine, and just “doing normal sunfish activities.”

    Mola Mola
    Members of Team Mola at Powers Landing in Wellfleet, left to right: NECWA interns Emma Wright and Ryan Spector, founder Carol “Krill” Carson, and volunteer Seth Cohen. (Photo Barbara Brennessel)

    Volunteers get calls to action via an app, and, during the first week of October, cell phones were pinging constantly with text messages indicating the locations of stranded fish. Carson and her volunteers fanned out from Brewster to Provincetown to assess the situations, document strandings, help animals get back to the water, and collect data and tissues from carcasses. Carson sends mola samples around the world to scientists who are studying these animals.

    Mola volunteers are a special breed. The fish they work with is not particularly charismatic, nor is it considered threatened or endangered. Many of the same volunteers are also trained to respond to marine mammals and sea turtles. Outer Cape Mola team members Seth Cohen, a former middle school science teacher, and Nick Picariello, a retired physician (and this writer’s husband) both say they do the work because they enjoy learning about Cape wildlife and contributing to scientific knowledge.

    Firefighter-paramedic Holly Kuhn says that Carson’s “energy and enthusiasm are contagious.” A pivotal moment for Kuhn happened when she saw a mola swim into shallow water near Mayo Beach in Wellfleet. Over the phone, Carson encouraged Kuhn to put on gloves, wade in, and push it back. “Being in the water with this giant, gentle, crazy-looking fish was mesmerizing,” Kuhn said. “And just like that, Krill had a new team member.”

    Members of Team Mola are not averse to long walks on the beach, even in foul weather, nor to the unique odor of a rotting carcass that will lead them to the specimen they seek. Volunteer Hal Levine, a former professional geologist, is surprised when other beach walkers “don’t even ask what we are doing,” as they examine the dead fish.

    When it’s feasible, the carcasses are weighed with a special apparatus that must be transported to the stranding site. Some of the larger Cape Cod specimens have topped 1,400 lbs. Rescues of live animals, when they are sighted in the shallows, consist essentially of pushing them into deeper water in hopes that they won’t wash up on a beach or marsh during the next low tide.

    If you see a Mola mola, please file a report at nebshark.org, or call the mola hotline: 508-566-0009.

    Barbara Brennessel is professor emerita at Wheaton College and a Team Mola volunteer.

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