spuglisi Posted September 23, 2014 Share Posted September 23, 2014 Of course we all know that....but it's kind of fun and exciting to be reminded. On Saturday, Dee and I were paddling off Cranes beach....maybe a quarter mile off shore maybe a bit less....when all of a sudden something broke the surface momentarily....it definitely wasn't a seal....just a flash and then it was gone. I thought maybe my eyes were playing tricks on me and that it may have been the sun glinting off the chop....but then .....up came a FIN??!!!! a big freaking fin. BIG....really big....but it didn't behave quite like you'd expect a predator to behave. The fin was moving about in a circle and kind of flopping from side to side. I was thinking maybe an ocean sunfish but I wasn't really sure how they behaved. Did I mention it was a BIG fin? Anyway.....we gave it some room and continued on....it was very spooky to see that fin come up out of the water. Once we returned to dry land we did some google research and we're pretty certain that what we saw was indeed a sunfish. Huge, harmless....but when you're at water level and not quite sure....it gets your heart pumping. A pretty cool experience. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doug Posted September 23, 2014 Share Posted September 23, 2014 Didn't Dee see a giant sturgeon on one of the paddles last year?I love fish stories!She's lucky like that. Good thing it had a floppy dorsal fin! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spuglisi Posted September 23, 2014 Author Share Posted September 23, 2014 Couple of years ago off Popham she saw the sturgeon leap clear out of the water. The other 4 of us that were there missed it entirely. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterB Posted September 23, 2014 Share Posted September 23, 2014 Sal , from your description it sounds like an ocean sunfish. They can sort of wallow at the surface of the ocean , or move in the way that you described; I saw one behaving just like that off of one of the Cape Cod beaches once . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leong Posted September 23, 2014 Share Posted September 23, 2014 Holy moly, a Mola Mola! I accidentally hit one and did a low brace off of his back near Halibut Point. The fish looked more impressive below the surface. I stayed around to make sure he/she was okay. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kate Posted September 23, 2014 Share Posted September 23, 2014 Aren't they amazing? My one and only sighting, up at Acadia last year, was heart-stopping. I didn't even think to take a photo. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spuglisi Posted September 23, 2014 Author Share Posted September 23, 2014 Photos were not the first thing on our minds either. It was a great experience though.....memorable for sure. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leong Posted September 24, 2014 Share Posted September 24, 2014 Photos were not the first thing on our minds either. It was a great experience though.....memorable for sure.Hmm, of the dozen or so Mola Mola’s that I’ve seen they’ve all been sun bathing in a horizontal orientation or slowly swimming. Plenty of time to shoot videos like this in Ipswich Bay between Lanes’s Cove and Plum Island. I guess that you’ve seen one swimming fast. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spuglisi Posted September 24, 2014 Author Share Posted September 24, 2014 Leon, It wasn't swimming fast...but it was swimming and must have been oriented vertically for the fin to be as prominent as it was. Nice that you got that video. What we saw most closely resembled image #1 that Peter posted. The sight of that large fin stopped us in our tracks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pintail Posted September 24, 2014 Share Posted September 24, 2014 I believe that Nancy and I saw just one of these yesterday, basking off Hodgkins Cove. The dorsal fin was <exactly> like the first photo PeterB posted above. They are around -- do they migrate south, anyone? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leong Posted September 24, 2014 Share Posted September 24, 2014 They are around -- do they migrate south, anyone?From here it says:In our New England waters, the most commonly encountered ocean sunfish is the Mola mola. These extremely large fish can be sighted in Cape Cod Bay and Massachusetts Bay in the summer months of July and August.Based on this I assume that the Mola’s follow me south for the colder months, although I’ve never seen one in Florida. But here’s a Mola near Cocoa Beach, about 120 miles north of my FLA location. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nancysan Posted September 26, 2014 Share Posted September 26, 2014 Hey, Pintail and I just saw one of those this past Tuesday. He was like "what do you suppose that is Nancy.?" I was like, OMG, maybe we should go the other direction. But he must have had some idea it wasn't a shark. One other experience was a dorsal fin off King's Beach a few years ago, probably a porpoise I was told, but who knows. There were kids sailing and turtling their boats that day, so it couldn't have been a shark. But this past Tuesday Chris said the beast was a funny looking fish. He went right up and got a look. I got a pretty good look at the fin several times. Didn't know what to think. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nancysan Posted September 26, 2014 Share Posted September 26, 2014 BTW our sighting was a mile or so going NE of Lanes Cove. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pintail Posted September 26, 2014 Share Posted September 26, 2014 Nancy, Nancy, Nancy! Southwest...(off Hodgkins' Cove, in fact -- see above)Shame: Shari and BobL missed this because they had paddled ahead. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nancysan Posted September 26, 2014 Share Posted September 26, 2014 Okay, figured I had the direction wrong. My bad... Plus I missed some of the earlier posts, including one by you. Double bad.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pintail Posted September 27, 2014 Share Posted September 27, 2014 Yes...you're just...bad! ;^) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shari G Posted September 27, 2014 Share Posted September 27, 2014 And yes, for shame that BOb and I missed out! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shari G Posted September 28, 2014 Share Posted September 28, 2014 A local Gloucester blog posted that 3 sunfish have been spotted off Halibut Point this week, so it is confirmed! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spuglisi Posted October 2, 2014 Author Share Posted October 2, 2014 Talking to a power boater just today and they said that there have been a lot of sightings these last couple of weeks. Also Dee saw another one Sunday in conjunction with the group paddle. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nancysan Posted October 3, 2014 Share Posted October 3, 2014 I'm a regular at Farnham's (my worst vice), and the lady that works there is a photographer. She came over to me and showed me a picture of one (whe knows I'm a kayaker). She has seen five off her boat in the past several weeks. Funny that she came to show me the pic, though. She says they can spray a poison if threatened, but that they are generally very tame and somewhat dim. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leong Posted October 3, 2014 Share Posted October 3, 2014 She says they can spray a poison if threatenedThey have very poisonous skin but I couldn’t find any mention of poisonous spray. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nancysan Posted October 4, 2014 Share Posted October 4, 2014 Re: woman's research: Maybe they "release" a little inadvertently. She said it rarely happens. After seeing the sunfish she was quite interested and read as much as she could find, but who knows her sources. Apparently they are pretty much left alone, so maybe we will be seeing more and more if the ocean temps continue to rise around here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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