THE LIST OF FISH species documented for the Bird’ s Head Seascape is the largest in the world, making this the epicentre of marine biodiversity. This list is by no means complete, however, and it seems to grow a little longer all the time, just as it did last week when Raja Ampat’ s first ocean sunfish, Mola ramsayi, awkwardly paddled by our boat.
Initially, I thought the strange fin wobbling through the glassy surface was that of a manta, as they often feed in this area. But as the mystery fin came closer it became clear it did not belong to a manta, as it was waving rather than flapping.
When the glare from the placid water shifted, we were finally able to witness the creature responsible for the disturbance in our surface interval naps – a beautiful ocean sunfish!
Sunfish spend the majority of their lives hundreds of metres below the surface and only come to the shallows for an occasional cleaning; we all knew it was really unusual to find one casually paddling along at the surface of the clearblue 29-degree water.
It wasn’ t until we started posting the photos online that we discovered it was actually the first ever sighting of a living ocean sunfish in the Bird’ s Head Seascape. It is now officially number 1,766 on the region’ s list of fish species!
Text & image by Alex Lindbloom
1,000 WORDS
“ The future is in the hands of those who explore... and from all the beauty they discover while crossing perpetually receding frontiers, they develop for Nature and for humankind, an infinite love.”
Jacques-Yves Cousteau, 1910 – 1997