Giant sunfish washes up on Western Australia's southern coast
By Samantha Goerling
ABC Great Southern
Topic:Oceans and Reefs
16m ago16 minutes agoThu 20 Mar 2025 at 11:36pm
Sunfish near Albany
Jason Fowler discovered the sunfish washed ashore on a beach west of Albany. (Supplied: Jason Fowler)
In short:
A 2.5-metre sunfish has washed ashore on Western Australia's south coast.
Sunfish are among the heaviest fish alive and can grow to more than 3 metres in length.
What's next?
A marine biologist says higher ocean temperatures may have caused the animal's death.
A giant sunfish that washed up on Western Australia's south coast could be a sign of a warm current moving south, a marine ecologist says.
The large fish was found on Lowlands Beach between Albany and Denmark, about 450 kilometres south of Perth, this week.
Local Jason Fowler spotted the 2.5-metre fish while fishing at the beach with his family.
"I looked down the beach and [saw] what I thought was a big log on the beach, which is highly unusual, so I walked down there to have a look and was very surprised to find a big sunfish lying on the beach," he said.
sunfish on albany beach
The Lowlands Beach sunfish measured about 2.5 metres in length. (Supplied: Jason Fowler)
"It looks like a giant sort of yellowy-brown blob on the beach.
"I've been diving on Ningaloo and saw them in real life so I knew what it was immediately. It just really stuck out how bizarre and weird it looked."
Sunfish, or mola, are large, round-bodied fish that can weigh thousands of kilograms.
Unique fish
They are also know for their unique behaviour.
"They are known to dive down quite deep into really cold water where they feed on jellyfish and squid and things like that," Mr Fowler said.
"They come back to the surface and they lie on their sides to present the greatest surface area to the sun. It's thought that they do that to warm up, to thermoregulate."
Mr Fowler, who is also a marine ecologist, said he was surprised to see one this far south.
"They're very common up around Indonesia and Hawaii and places like that," he said.
"In the Southern Ocean they're much rarer."
Two men stand behind a giant sunfish along the Coorong
A giant sunfish was found along the Coorong at the mouth of the Murray River in 2019. (Facebook: Linette Grzelak)
Mr Fowler said this fish's death could be linked to recent marine heatwave events along WA's coast.
"We had a big bleaching event at Scott Reef in the northern Kimberley and then that big blob of hot water moved down the coast, bleached the West Kimberley corals, and it moved down into the Pilbara," he said.
A marine heatwave has been blamed for a mass fish kill event in which 30,000 fish washed up at Gnoorea Beach in January and the bleaching of deep corals at Ningaloo Reef for the first time on record.
Mr Fowler said the species were very sensitive to temperature changes.
"My guess is that the sea surface temperatures would have had a lot to do with this animal dying and washing ashore," he said.
Sunfish around Australia
A large round fish with huge fins and spotted skin.
The unusual-looking sunfish are found around the world. (Flickr: Ilse Reijs and Jan-Noud Hutten; licence)
In June 2023 nine slender sunfish were found on Frenchman Bay and Goode Beach in Albany prompting an investigating by the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development.
Around the same time a giant was found washed up in South Australia prompting media coverage across the world.
The ocean sunfish can grow up to 3.3 metres in length, weigh up to 2 tonnes, and are one of the heaviest known bony fishes in the world.
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Posted16m ago16 minutes agoThu 20 Mar 2025 at 11:36pm
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