Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Mola Mola

When I was a nipper one of the great joys of my life was being taken with wide eyes and an open mind to explore the dark and towering exhibits of the Queensland Museum. Nowadays housed in an appropriately huge and spacious gallery, the old museum of my youth was the slightly eerie and mysterious (to a five year old) grand, colourful brick building still nestled into Brisbane's inner suburbs. Hanging low from the ceiling (not far off the ground), about half way along the main hall, beside a giant globe of the earth that showed the rough topography of the main mountain ranges, hung the one exhibit that intrigued me more than any other, and the only one that I now have firm memories of. The creature was so strange, so obscure that it could easily have been an alien, or a cruel trick of taxidermy.

The Mola Mola (whose scientific name is also Mola mola) is perhaps more commonly known as it was in the QLD Museum, as the Sun Fish. This giant and very strange fish is the largest and heaviest of the world's bony fish, measuring in at up to 4.5m tip to tip and from 1000 to 2300kg and it is this very fish that Lain and I have been hoping to catch a glimpse of during our travels in Indonesia. 

It was with a great sense of joy, and a little childhood reminiscing,  that today I finally managed to tick this species off the painfully long 'list of things to see before I die'. What caught me by surprise was that this huge, flat, ungainly creature was not only capable of swimming in a straight line (it doesn't appear possible), but with enough speed to launch itself out of the water and breach as though it was giving us its best humpback impression. Over the months of paddling we have seen quite a few USO's (unidentified splashing objects) and after witnessing the splash of the sunfish from close range we realised that they have probably been swimming and splashing around us for much of the way. 

Our days have been recently spent paddling light, unloaded boats through the roaring currents of the Pantar Strait, circumnavigating islands, snorkelling steep coral walls, and just lapping up the incredible environment in this remote and beautiful place. 

There may now be a tick in the Mola Mola box but there are so many other unique and beautiful animals to track down - I suspect we might need another crazy adventure to some other far flung corner of the world to find even more wonders of this awe-inspiring planet. Mmmm…where to next?

Picture: The elusive Mola Mola or Sun Fish. (Not my piccy - cheers Google)

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