For years, ocean sunfish, or mola, spotted off Canada’s West Coast, were identified as Mola mola, the most abundant and widespread ocean sunfish species found in the Northern Hemisphere.
But now, researchers are identifying a number of these fish as Mola tecta, or hoodwinker sunfish, a species previously thought only to exist in the Southern Hemisphere. They’re finding them as far north as Alaska.
The hoodwinker is the subject of a collaboration between researchers in Canada, New Zealand and California who are working to expose the sunfish that’s been hiding in plain sight, using crowd-sourced data from photographs and sightings along North America’s west coast.
One of those photographs came from 2011, when former environmental consultant Matthew Drake investigated a small mola that had stranded near a seaplane base in Port Hardy, B.C. He and his colleagues called it a Mola mola.
But researchers have now identified it as the elusive hoodwinker.
“It makes you question things you’ve seen in the past,” said Drake. “Sometimes subtleties can be the difference between one species and the next, and that’s what’s happened here.”
Jackie Hildering, co-founder of the Marine Education and Research Society, who is overseeing the collection of sightings of hoodwinkers off the coast of B.C., said the discovery is a testament to how little we know about cold water life and the value of crowd-sourced data in discovering new species.
“The average person already is not aware that Mola mola are off our coast, let alone that we could be misidentifying an animal that big,” said Hildering.
“It’s inspiring that we still live in a time where we can find out that a fabulously odd-looking fish which [was] presumed to be just one species actually has a fabulously odd-looking cousin that’s also in our waters.”
Hoodwinker spotted in California catalyst for research
Prior to its fairly recent discovery, the hoodwinker sunfish had gone unnoticed for nearly 130 years. The oldest preserved specimen from the 19th century had been hidden behind in the Netherlands’ Naturalis Biodiversity Center’s museum storage behind an impassable giraffe.
Records of the hoodwinker sunfish in the Northern Hemisphere appeared two years after marine scientist Dr. Marianne Nyegaard published her discovery of the speciesin 2017, which she had first identified in the waters off New Zealand four years prior.
“[Back then], I had done the best I could in trying to find where this species could be and everything pointed toward the temperate Southern Hemisphere,” she said.
Marianne Nyegaard is pictured here in New Zealand with a stranded hoodwinker sunfish. Nyegaard speculates that the fish might move north during La Niña years, when cooler equatorial water makes crossing the equator easier for the fish physiologically. (Ocean Sunfish Research Trust)
But in February 2019, a dead ocean sunfish strongly resembling the hoodwinker poked holes in her theory, washing up in California, more than 6,500 kilometres north of what Nyegaard had thought was the edge of its habitat range.
At first, she couldn’t believe the coincidence. When genetic analysis proved that the animal was, in fact, a hoodwinker sunfish, moved online to search for evidence of other hoodwinkers that had been mistakenly identified as Mola mola in the northwest part of the Pacific.
“I was just trolling the net going, ‘Oh my God, that looks a lot like a hoodwinker. That looks like one too,'” said Nyegaard. “I would reach out to people and ask, ‘Have you got more photos?'”
Sure enough, Nyegaard found that many hoodwinkers had been misidentified along the western coast of North America, a discovery that has informed what she calls her pandemic passion project to track the little-understood species’ presence in distant waters.
“We find animals out of range all the time, so that’s not that unusual,” she said. “To me, the unusual bit is that there is more than one. It’s not just a 100-year occurrence or a freaky coincidence. They’re infrequent, but they’re not freakishly rare.”
For Nyegaard and her colleagues, quantifying how long hoodwinker sunfish have been living in or making their way toward Canadian waters is limited by the fact that historical records basically start with the beginning of social media.
Lack of data prior to crowd-sourced science project
But a global pandemic that made travel impossible for Nyegaard set the conditions for creating a virtual network of marine researchers and advocates who are gathering sightings along North America’s west coast like Hildering.
Prior to the Pacific Northwest Mola tecta study, Hildering said that data on ocean sunfish in B.C. was collected through incidental sightings recorded by Fisheries and Oceans Canada and through a directed survey from 2004 to 2006.
“There’s been collection, but never with the perspective of holy crap, there’s actually two species,” said Hildering.
Now, she’s using her network as “a catalyst for more sightings, using social media to follow the clues of people who have posted about [mola] outside of what’s already out there.”
A hoodwinker sunfish spotted at a popular dive site called Eric’s Pinnacle in Monterey Bay, Calif., August 2019. (Joe Platko and JR Sosky) 1:07
Hoodwinker sunfish generally have a flatter head shape and smaller, more rounded back ends than Mola mola. But the differences are subtle, meaning that in order to confirm sightings of hoodwinker sunfish, researchers rely on good, if not great, pictures.
When Peter and Roma Shaughnessy came across a sculling mola in Kisameet Bay last August, they collected GPS co-ordinates, video, and over 100 photos of the animal, they said, recording observations about its behaviour.
“We wished someday we would see one, never thinking we would,” said the avid boaters and residents of the Chilcotin region of B.C., calling the encounter “a lifetime event.”
Data collection like that carried out by the Shaughnessys comes pretty close to the gold-standard for Nyegaard’s research.
“If we have a photo, say of a fin coming out of the water, we won’t say what it is. We’ll just call it a sunfish,” said Nyegaard. “To identify these animals, you need to have good pictures and often we don’t have them.”
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The body of Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei — who died after being set on fire by her partner in Kenya — was received Friday by family and anti-femicide crusaders, ahead of her burial a day later.
Cheptegei’s family met with dozens of activists Friday who had marched to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital’s morgue in the western city of Eldoret while chanting anti-femicide slogans.
She is the fourth female athlete to have been killed by her partner in Kenya in yet another case of gender-based violence in recent years.
Viola Cheptoo, the founder of Tirop Angels – an organization that was formed in honor of athlete Agnes Tirop, who was stabbed to death in 2021, said stakeholders need to ensure this is the last death of an athlete due to gender-based violence.
“We are here to say that enough is enough, we are tired of burying our sisters due to GBV,” she said.
It was a somber mood at the morgue as athletes and family members viewed Cheptegei’s body which sustained 80% of burns after she was doused with gasoline by her partner Dickson Ndiema. Ndiema sustained 30% burns on his body and later succumbed.
Ndiema and Cheptegei were said to have quarreled over a piece of land that the athlete bought in Kenya, according to a report filed by the local chief.
Cheptegei competed in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics less than a month before the attack. She finished in 44th place.
Cheptegei’s father, Joseph, said that the body will make a brief stop at their home in the Endebess area before proceeding to Bukwo in eastern Uganda for a night vigil and burial on Saturday.
“We are in the final part of giving my daughter the last respect,” a visibly distraught Joseph said.
He told reporters last week that Ndiema was stalking and threatening Cheptegei and the family had informed police.
Four in 10 women or an estimated 41% of dating or married Kenyan women have experienced physical or sexual violence perpetrated by their current or most recent partner, according to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey 2022.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
