A man in California found one of the rarest fish on earth washed up on a Bodega Bay beach on Sunday. He had dropped his wife off at the airport and headed to the beach to pick up trash when he spotted something massive on the sand, a blob he at first thought to be a deceased sea lion.
It turned out to be a 6-foot long, 3-foot tall Mola tecta fish, a rare fish species that has only been documented by scientists dating back to 2017 when it was first discovered in New Zealand.
The Mola tecta fish was first described by scientists Marianne Nyegaard and colleagues in 2017. It was given distinct subspecies status due to both genetic and morphological differences from the more common Mola Mola and the Mola alexandrini.
Most notably, the morphological differences include no back fin, tail, and a very tiny nose that is very out of proportion for such a large fish, according to an article in the Press Democrat.
After taking photographs of the enormous rare fish on the beach he went home and googled something like 'enormous rare dead fish on beach near me' and found an article about a Mola mola from 2019 but noticed the distinct morphological differences.
From there, he contacted the Press Democrat who contacted a scientist in New Zealand and they determined it was the extremely rare and only recently documented Mola tecta fish. At that point, they had also gathered new footage of the massive fish on the beach which you can see here:
Until 2019, Dr. Marianne Nyegaard of New Zealand and her colleagues believed the Mola tecta species only existed in the Southern Hemisphere. But since 2019, a handful of specimens have washed up on beaches in Oregon, Alaska, and Southern California.