The moonfish is the largest living bony fish. Despite its impressive size and low mobility, this fish is not a commercial species, and it has almost no enemies. Why? We will find out the answers to these and many other questions today in the "best-most" heading.

The moonfish (Latin mola-mola) is one of the most amazing sea creatures. Its Latin name translates as "millstone", which is quite consistent with the size and shape of this fish, reminiscent of a huge disc, flattened on the sides. The back of the body seems to be chopped off and ends in a wavy edge, which is a modified fixed caudal fin.

It is the absence of the tail section that makes the fish so slow. The dorsal and anal fins are narrow and high, opposed to each other and pushed far back. The head ends in a very small parrot-shaped mouth. Jaws without teeth. The teeth are replaced by a solid enamel plate. The skin of the moon fish is covered with small bony tubercles. The skin is unusually thick, strong and elastic - they say that even the ship's skin cannot withstand this and paint peels off from it. The color of the fish moon is dark gray or brown, with light spots of irregular shape and different sizes.

Luna fish prefers solitude, but sometimes they are greeted in pairs. Despite the fact that even large moon-fish can not cause any harm to a person, in some places off the coast of South Africa, fishermen experience superstitious fear when meeting this fish, considering it a harbinger of trouble, and hastily return to the shore. This, apparently, is explained by the fact that the "moon" approaches the shores only before bad weather, and fishermen associate its appearance with an impending storm.

The moonfish is found in tropical and temperate waters. Spawns in tropical waters of the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans. In the North Atlantic, moonfish can be found off the shores of Newfoundland, Iceland, Great Britain, in the western part of the Baltic Sea and along the shores of Norway and the Kola Peninsula. You can often see the moonfish lying on its side on the surface of the water.

In our Far Eastern waters, it is occasionally found in the summer in the northern part of the Sea of ​​Japan and in the region of the southern islands of the Great Kuril ridge.

Moonfish also claims to be the most prolific fish: one female can throw up to 300 million eggs, the size of each egg is about 1 mm. If you put all the eggs in a row, you can get a chain 300 kilometers long. When the fish-moon fry is born, it is 60 million times smaller than the volume of its mother. The fry have a peculiar appearance: they are decorated with long spines, which subsequently disappear.

Alfred Bram wrote: “In an irritated state, the moon-fish grunts like a pig; some argue that the moonfish in the water glows, while others deny it. The meat of this fish is very tasteless, like glue, with a disgusting smell; if boiled down, it can be used as glue ”.

It feeds mainly on plankton. The moonfish is limited to sucking in prey that swims past within reach: shrimp, larvae, molluscs, jellyfish or fry.

The moonfish has almost no natural enemies - there are few predators capable of biting through such a skin. But neither the exotic appearance of the goggle-eyed "floating millstone", nor large sizes do not save the moonfish from the rare attacks of fierce sea predators - sharks. In California waters, the latter arrange bloody massacres - they seek to bite off the fins of the moon fish, after which it becomes completely helpless and dies at the bottom of the ocean. Unfortunately, humans also pose a serious danger to this marine life. In some East Asian countries, where moon fish, despite the foul-smelling meat, is considered a delicacy, it is caught on purpose. The moon fish cannot live in captivity and dies even under the most seemingly ideal conditions.

compiled by Alena Andreeva, Photo: lumbricus.livejournal.com

Together with hedgehog fish and puffer fish, the Moonfish belongs to the order of puffer fish. The moon fish has a lot in common with them. The family of lunar or lunar fish (Molidae) is associated with their unusual disc-like shape.

Different names for the same fish

Also, the moonfish is also called the sunfish or "sunfish" because of its habit of rising to the surface to bask in the sun. Poles call this fish "lonely head", Germans - "floating head", and in China - "overturned car". In the scientific community, the moon fish is called "mola mola". From Latin the translation of the words "Mola-Mola" means "millstone".

These fish got their name not only because of the specific shape of the body, but also because of the rough skin, painted in gray, white, brown or silver-gray colors, sometimes even with patterns.

In the moonfish, the tail bones are absent, and their skeleton is mainly gristly. Also, "mola mola" does not have a swim bladder, it disappears for another early stages development of larvae.

Moonfish sizes

Due to its solid size and unusual appearance, the moonfish looks quite menacing. However, for humans, it does not pose any particular threat. feeds on zooplankton, ctenophores, small crustaceans, jellyfish. The largest specimen among those caught is called the 5.5 meter long moonfish.

At the same time, according to some signs, the appearance of this huge fish is interpreted by the sailors as a warning of trouble. It is quite possible that this is due to the fact that usually the moonfish approaches the shore before a storm and worsening weather.

How does Mola-Mola swim?

The Moon-Fish swims badly and often aimlessly succumbs to the will of the current. Large adult fish often swim on their sides. To move like a bird with wings, the moonfish flap its long and narrow fins, small pectoral fins are stabilizers. For turns, the moonfish spit from the gills or mouth with a strong stream of water.

Where does the Moon Fish live?

Almost all representatives of moonfish are common in subtropical and tropical, less often in temperate waters. Mola-Mola lives at great depths (up to several kilometers), often rising to the surface to bask in the sun.

The moonfish spawns in the waters of the Indian, Atlantic and Pacific oceans. One female Moon Pisces is capable of laying up to 300 million eggs at a time. However, despite their fertility, the population of these fish is constantly decreasing. The moonfish has many natural enemies that kill larvae and adult fish. In addition, in some Asian countries, there is a large-scale fishing moonfish. However, according to some reports, it is believed that the meat of these fish contains toxins.

By appearance they are very different, but they are part of the order of pufferfish, having a similarity in the structure of teeth and skin and the absence of gill covers. They belong to different suborders: the fugu are dog fish, and the moon is lunar, in which there is only one family (Molidae) and the most famous representative is Mola mola. Due to its almost rounded body shape, it is sometimes called the sunfish.

Amazing appearance

The strangest thing about this huge fish is the lack of a tail fin. It seems that a piece was cut off from her torso. In fact, all representatives of the lunate have atrophied the back of the spine, and with it the tail. At this point, they have a cartilaginous plate that acts as an oar, supported by fragments of the caudal and dorsal fins. Thanks to such a short body, there is another name - fish-head.

Other appearance features:

• High, laterally flattened and short body looks like a disk.
• The dorsal fin is very high and pushed back.
• The anal fin is symmetrical in location to the dorsal (located directly below it) and is almost the same in shape.
• There are no pelvic fins, and the pectorals are small.
• The eyes are large enough and the mouth is very small, reminiscent of a parrot's beak.
• The color can vary depending on the habitat from brown to gray-silver, sometimes with a variegated pattern.

You can see these amazing features in the photo of the fish of the moon.

An interesting fact: like a flounder that changes color when the surrounding background changes, the moon at the moment of danger can also change its color.

Similarities with other blowfish

Fish-moon by its position in the fish system is related to, because they both belong to the order of blowfish, but to different families. They are made similar by the following structural features:

• The gills are not covered with lids. In front of the pectoral fins, small oval holes are clearly visible - the gill slits.
• There are no teeth on the jaws, they are all fused into two solid enamel plates: one is located on lower jaw, the second is on the top. (Other representatives of the order of puffer-like tooth plates have four, for example, y).
• There are no scales on the skin.

The peculiarity of the skin of the moon is protection from predators and fishermen

This unusual head fish has a special skin. Like all compatriots in the order of blowfish, it has no scales, but the skin itself is very rough and thick, covered from above with abundant mucous secretions. At first glance, it may seem that the rounded and flat body of the moon is highly vulnerable due to its bare skin. But nature took care of its safety, providing the skin with specific additions:

• The role of scales is played by small bony protrusions located on the surface of the skin.
• Directly under the skin is a very thick layer of cartilaginous tissue. Its thickness is from 5 to 7.5 centimeters.

Thanks to such features of the skin, the fish - the moon is reliably protected from the harpoons of fishermen: it is quite difficult to break through such a strong protection. The harpoon bounces off the body of the moonfish or slips along flat side her body.

Predators (sharks and killer whales) are serious enemies of these slow moving fish. Having bitten off the fins, and thus immobilizing the moon, they begin to tear its body apart. But even sharks succeed in this with noticeable efforts: it is difficult for them to bite through a thick layer of the skin of their prey.

Size, weight and other features

The giant moon fish has an impressive size, growing up to three or more meters in length.

• From the Guinness Book of Records, information is known about an individual that was caught off the coast of Australia (near the city of Sydney, September 1908). Its length was 310 centimeters, and its height (from the tip of the dorsal fin to the tip of the anal) was 426 centimeters. The body weight of this specimen was more than 2 tons (2235 kilograms).
• The book "Animal Life" mentions the truly super-giant size of the fish of the moon: off the Atlantic coast in the northwestern part of the United States in the state of New Hampshire, a specimen was caught, the length of which was 550 centimeters, but the weight remained a mystery. The average size is about two meters with a height of two and a half (height is the distance between the ends of the fins).

The head fish is considered the heaviest of all its bony counterparts currently known to science. The lateral line sense organs are absent and there is no swim bladder.

Behavior, movement and nutrition

Looking at the photo of the moon fish, it becomes clear why it is difficult for it to keep its body upright in the water: it is very flat and there is no normal tail.

Fish-heads swim using anal and dorsal fins, moving them like oars. Changing the position of these fins helps them to maneuver a little during movement (like the wings of birds). The pectorals act as stabilizers of movement.

How does a giant moonfish make turns while swimming? To turn, she uses the reactive principle: releasing a strong stream of water from the gills or mouth, she herself moves in the opposite direction.

Mola mola spends a lot of time lying on its side in the water column. She was once considered a poor swimmer, unable to withstand strong currents, and she was on the lists of oceanic macroplankton. But recent careful observations indicate that an individual of this species can reach speeds of up to a little over 3 kilometers per hour, and can swim a distance of 26 kilometers per day.

The area of ​​the ordinary moon

The common moonfish lives in all oceans except the Arctic. She prefers tropical and temperate waters.

Individuals living in different hemispheres (Northern and Southern) differ slightly at the genetic level.

This species is pelagic and prefers deep water layers: the lower limit of their distribution is a depth of 844 meters. Most often, adults are found deeper than 200 meters. The results of other studies show that they spend a third of their time in the near-surface layers of water (no deeper than 10 meters).

Comfortable water temperature

Fish of this species are usually found in places where the water temperature is more than 10 degrees. With a long stay in more cold water they can become disoriented in space or even die. Fish of the sun can often be found lying on its side directly on the water surface, while its fins can appear above the water. An exact explanation for this behavior has not yet been found. There are two versions:

• Individuals that rise to the surface are sick or dying. They are often very easy to catch, and their stomachs are usually empty.
• Before diving into deep layers of water (colder than surface), all representatives of this species do this, warming up their body in this way and preparing for diving.

How does she eat

The moonfish eats very funny. She cannot catch up with her prey, being unable to develop sufficient speed, Therefore, she sucks in water with her mouth and with it everything that turns out to be in this stream of water. Its diet is based on various zooplankton organisms, including salps, jellyfish and comb jellies.

Sometimes in the digestive system of caught specimens of this species, the remains of algae, starfish, crustaceans, sponges, eel larvae and other small fish were found. This confirms the fact that they feed in different layers of water: in the bottom and in the surface.

There are descriptions of the interesting behavior of the moonfish when it hunts for mackerel. Having found a flock of mackerel, it accelerates (as far as possible with its bulky body) and falls flat on the water surface with great force. Such a maneuver stuns the victim, and mackerels become available prey for the hunter. But these are exceptional situations.

Harbinger of trouble?

Even large individuals of the sun fish are not capable of causing harm when meeting a person. Yet in some places on the South African coast, fishermen have a superstitious fear when they meet this fish off the coast in shallow waters. In such a situation, they rush to return to the shore, considering this meeting a harbinger of trouble.

The moons often approach the shores on the eve of worsening weather conditions, so people began to associate its appearance with an impending sea storm or storm.

Having met this fish in the ocean, you can be seriously scared. Still - a whopper 3-5 meters long and weighing several tons is capable of instilling fear with its size and completely implausible appearance.

In fact, the moonfish is completely harmless, because it feeds on jellyfish, comb jellies, small fish, crustaceans and other zooplankton, which, unfortunately, was next to it. This fish does not know how to quickly maneuver and quickly swim in pursuit of prey, but only sucks into its mouth-beak everything edible that is nearby.

Due to its rounded shape, in many languages ​​of the world, this unusual creature is called the moon fish, or the sunfish, because of the habit of basking in the sun, floating on the surface. The translation of the German name means "floating head", Polish - "lonely head", the Chinese call this fish "upside-down car". In Latin, the most numerous genus of these fish is called mola, which means "millstone". Fish have earned a similar name not only for their body shape, but also for their gray, rough skin.

Moonfish belong to the order of blowfish, which includes blowfish and hedgehog fish, with which they have much in common. First of all, these are four fused front teeth that form a characteristic non-closing beak, which gave the Latin name to the order - Tetraodontiformes (four-toothed). The family of moon-like, or moon-fish, (Molidae) is united by an unusual species of these millstone-like animals. One gets the impression that at the dawn of evolution, someone bit off the fish back bodies just behind the dorsal and anal fins, but they survived and gave birth to equally strange offspring.

Indeed, representatives of this family have fewer vertebrae than other teleost fishes, for example, in the species mola mola - there are only 16 of them, pelvic girdle completely reduced, the caudal fin is absent, and instead there is a tuberous pseudo-tail. The Molidae family includes three genera and five species of moonfish:

Sharptail mola, Masturus lanceolatus
Masturus oxyuropterus

Ocean sunfish, Mola mola
Southern moonfish, Southern sunfish, Mola ramsayi

Slender moonfish, Slender sunfish, Ranzania laevis.

Almost all members of the moonfish family live in tropical, subtropical, and sometimes temperate waters. They all reach large sizes and have a rounded, laterally compressed shape of the head and body. They have rough skin, no tail bones, and the skeleton is made up mostly of cartilage. Moonfish have no bony plates in their skin, but the skin itself is thick and dense, like cartilage. They are painted in brown, silver-gray, white, sometimes with patterns, colors. These fish lack swim bladder, which disappears in the early stages of larval development.

Moonfish are the largest of the bony fish. The largest measured mola mola was 3.3 meters long and weighed 2.3 tons. There are reports that fish were caught that reached a length of more than five meters. In the process of development from larvae to adults, all moonfish go through several stages of development, and all forms are completely different from each other. The larvae hatching from the eggs resemble puffers, then wide bony plates appear on the body of the grown larvae, which later remain only in fish of the genus Ranzania, in the mole and masturus, the protrusions on the plates gradually turn into sharp long spines, which then disappear. The caudal fin and swim bladder gradually disappear, and the teeth merge into a single plate.

Moon fish - (lat. Mola mola), translated from Latin as a millstone. This fish can be more than three meters long and weigh about one and a half tons. The largest specimen of moonfish was caught in New Hampshire, USA. Its length was five and a half meters, there are no data on weight. In shape, the body of the fish resembles a disk, it was this feature that gave rise to the Latin name.

Moonfish of the genus Mola have been studied most of all. Fish of the genus Masturus are very similar to mola mola, but they have an elongated pseudo-tail, and their eyes are more displaced forward. It was believed that these fish are abnormal mola, which still have a larval tail, but studies have shown that in the process of fish growth, the rays of the pseudo-tail appear after the reduction of the larval tail. Representatives of the genus Ranzania differ somewhat from other moonfish, which reach a small size of 1 m and have a flatter and more elongated body shape.

When moving, all moonfish use very long and narrow anal and dorsal fins, flapping their wings like a bird, while small pectoral fins serve as stabilizers. To steer, fish spit a strong stream of water from their mouths or gills. Despite the love to bask in the sun, moonfish live at a venerable depth of several hundred, and sometimes thousands of meters.

Moonfish are reported to be able to produce sounds by rubbing their pharyngeal teeth, which are long and claw-like.

In 1908, this fish moon was caught 65 kilometers off the coast of Sydney, it got entangled in the propellers of the steamer "Fiona" and the ship was unable to move on. At that time it was the largest specimen of the moon fish caught, it reached 3.1 m in length and 4.1 m in width.Photo: danmeth

Moonfish are the record holders for the number of eggs spawned, one female is capable of laying several hundred million eggs. Despite such fertility, the number of these extraordinary fish is declining. In addition to natural enemies that hunt larvae and adults, the population of moonfish is threatened by humans: in many Asian countries they are considered curative and large-scale capture is carried out, although there is information that the meat of these fish contains toxins, like hedgehogs and blowfish and in internal organs there is a poison tetrodotoxin, like puffer fish.

In the moon fish, the skin is very thick. It is elastic, and its surface is covered with small bony protrusions. Larvae of this species and juveniles swim in the usual way. Adults large fish swim on their side, quietly moving their fins. They seem to lie on the surface of the water, where it is very easy to notice and catch them. However, many experts believe that only sick fish swim in this way. As an argument, they cite the fact that the stomach of fish caught on the surface is usually empty.

Compared to other fish, the moonfish swims poorly. She is unable to resist the current and often floats at the behest of the waves, without a goal. This is observed by sailors, noticing the dorsal fin of this clumsy fish.

In the Atlantic Ocean, the moonfish can reach Great Britain and Iceland, the shores of Norway, and even climb even further north. In the Pacific Ocean in the summer you can see the moonfish in the Sea of ​​Japan, more often in the northern part, and near the Kuril Islands.

Although the moonfish looks quite menacing because of its impressive size, it is not scary to humans. However, there are many signs among South African sailors who interpret the appearance of this fish as a sign of trouble. Probably, this is due to the fact that the fish-moon approaches the coast only before the weather worsens. Sailors associate the appearance of fish with the approaching storm and rush to return to the shore. Similar superstitions also appear due to unusual kind fish and its way of swimming.

Scientific classification:
Domain: Eukaryotes
Kingdom: Animals
Type of: Chordates
Class: Beam-finned fish
Detachment: Blowfish
Family: Moon-fish (Latin Molidae (Bonaparte, 1832))

The moonfish reaches over 3 m in length and 1410 kg in weight, and once off the Atlantic coast of the United States (New Hampshire), a 5.5 m long supergiant was caught, the weight of which remained unknown. The short body of this fish, strongly compressed from the sides, approaches the shape of a disc. (It is no coincidence that she was given the scientific name "Mola", which means "millstone" in Latin.) The unusually thick and elastic skin of the moon-fish is covered with small bony tubercles.The larvae and juveniles of this species swim like ordinary fish, and the adults spend a significant part of their time lying on their side, near the surface, lazily fingering their high dorsal and anal fins, alternately exposing them out of the water.

moonfish

True, there is an assumption that sick and dying fish do this, which is why they are caught without any difficulty and which usually have an empty stomach. Moonfish is a very poor swimmer, unable to overcome strong current... Sometimes from the ship you can observe how this harmless monster, swaying sluggishly and sticking out the top of the dorsal fin from the water, slowly swims without any visible purpose. It feeds on zooplankton: various crustaceans, small squids, eel larvae (leptocephals) and many salps, ctenophores and jellyfish are often found in the stomach. It is possible that large individuals are able to descend to a considerable depth. Moonfish is the most prolific fish: one female spawns up to 300 million eggs. Pelagic caviar. It spawns in tropical waters of the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans, but adult fish carried by warm currents often penetrate into moderately warm waters. In the North Atlantic they reach Newfoundland, Iceland, Great Britain, the western part of the Baltic Sea and along the coast of Norway even as far as Murman. In our Far Eastern waters in summer, they are occasionally found in the northern part of the Sea of ​​Japan and in the region of the southern islands of the Great Kuril ridge. Despite the fact that even large fish moons cannot do any harm to a person, in some places off the coast of South Africa, fishermen experience superstitious fear when meeting this fish, considering it a harbinger of trouble, and hastily return to the shore. This, apparently, is explained by the fact that only before bad weather can one see a fish moon near the coast, and fishermen associate its appearance with an impending storm.