Taking a walk along Noordhoek Beach in the Cape I stumbled on a dead sunfish. This was only a baby, but still something very unusual to see washed up. Sunfishes are so called because of their habit of drifting at the surface as if basking in the sun. There are two species of sunfishes found in the waters surrounding Cape Town, the Ocean Sunfish (Mola mola) and the Sharptail Sunfish (Masturus lanceolatus). Now I'm no sunfish expert so I'm not going to guess which one this was. Looking at its tail though it could possibly be a Sharptail Sunfish. Sharptail sunfishes are found only in warmer waters though, thus extremely rare in local waters. So I'm not guessing. Sunfish can grow up to 3m in length and a weight of 2 000 kilograms.
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