Pelagic fishes - A Fascination for Fish: Adventures of an Underwater Pioneer - page 270

Fishes like bonito and California barracuda from southern California
are seen in Monterey occasionally, but then only during strong El Niño
years.
Given the sporadic occurrence in Monterey Bay of many of these
fishes, I knew we had to collect them where and when they were most
likely to be abundant. Once they were in the aquarium, keeping them
healthy and strong in captivity was another hurdle. Albacore had never
been kept in any aquarium. In the 1960s, Marineland of the Pacific
had kept bonito and barracuda quite well, but the aquarium sta¤ col-
lected them at their doorstep, so to speak, and didn't have to deal with
the added problem of transporting the fish over long distances. We had
our work cut out for us, there was no doubt about it.
OCEAN SUNFISH
Our first challenge was to work with the ocean sunfish. This animal—
whose scientific name, Mola mola, means “millstone” in Latin, no doubt
because of its flat, round profile—must be one of the most eccentric-
looking but delightful fish in the world. Their rather silly open mouth
and expressive eyes plus their strange, lumpy shape make them most
appealing to anyone who sees them. Indeed, almost nothing about them
resembles a “normal” fish. Their tail has practically disappeared, leav-
ing a stumpy appendage that functions as a rudder, and they swim by
sculling motions of their tall dorsal and anal fins. A thick, sticky slime
covers their skin, beneath which is a layer of cartilage that is almost
like a subcutaneous skeleton. They feed primarily on jellies of various
kinds, yet despite this nutritionally poor diet they grow to enormous
size, measuring as much as ten or twelve feet in diameter and weigh-
ing up to 3,800 pounds.
No U.S. aquarium had had much success keeping molas, but some
Japanese aquariums had displayed them for a number of years by them-
selves in relatively small tanks. To prevent the molas from rubbing on
the wall, the Japanese aquarists lined their tanks with a transparent
vinyl curtain suspended a few inches from the wall. I found it dis-
tressing to see these large fish cooped up in such small spaces. My hope
was that in a very large exhibit tank such as the one we had in mind