"After dropping his wife at an airport shuttle early Sunday morning, Kiesbye headed out to Doran Regional Park in Bodega Bay. Arriving an hour before sunrise, he was greeted by a chorus of sea lions barking from the end of the jetty. At the westernmost tip of the beach, some 50 feet above the waterline, he spied a large creature out of the corner of his eye. In recent years, Kiesbye has encountered several deceased sea lions at Doran. But this was a different animal: a stranded fish, oval in shape, roughly 6 feet long and 3 feet across."
"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. After snapping some pictures, Kiesbye returned to the task at hand, collecting refuse - beer cans, plastic bottles and discarded beach toys, for the most part."
Stefan Kiesbye routinely travels from Santa Rosa to Bodega Bay to collect beach trash. One early morning at Doran Regional Park he arrived before sunrise and heard sea lions at the jetty. He discovered a large stranded fish about six feet long and three feet across with no obvious tail or back fin. The specimen matched the hoodwinker sunfish, Mola tecta, a species named in 2017, with its Latin name tectus meaning hidden. Marianne Nyegaard of New Zealand confirmed the identification after reviewing photographs.
Read at The Mercury News
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