"This strange fish, its small mouth far out of proportion with the rest of its body, had neither a tail, so far as he could tell, nor back fin. He was looking at the body of a hoodwinker sunfish, or Mola tecta derived from the Latin word tectus, meaning hidden a species whose existence has only been known since 2017. That's when it was first described by a group of researchers led by Marianne Nyegaard of New Zealand."
"He found a 2019 CNN story about an extremely rare sunfish that had washed in with the tides at UC Santa Barbara's Coal Oil Point Reserve. That fish, the first hoodwinker to be observed north of the equator, bore an uncanny resemblance to the sunfish he'd just photographed. After reviewing photos emailed by the Press Democrat on Sunday, Nyegaard, who is based in Auckland, confirmed that the Doran Beach sunfish was, in fact, a hoodwinker."
A Sonoma State professor performing weekly beach cleanup at Doran Regional Park discovered a large, unusual stranded fish roughly six feet long and three feet across. The fish had a small mouth, lacked an obvious tail and back fin, and appeared oval in shape. Photographs were taken and compared with a 2019 CNN report of a similar rare sunfish found at UC Santa Barbara. The specimen matched identifying features of Mola tecta, the hoodwinker sunfish, a species first described in 2017 by researchers led by Marianne Nyegaard of New Zealand, who confirmed the identification.
Read at www.pressdemocrat.com
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