Mola mola (Linnaeus, 1758)

Ray, Dipanjan, Mohapatra, Anil, Ghorai, Mrinmay, Tudu, Prasad Chandra & Mishra, Subhrendu Sekhar, 2019, First record of a rare sunfish, Mola mola (Linnaeus, 1758) from coastal waters of West Bengal, India, Records of the Zoological Survey of India 119 (1), pp. 81-84 : 81-82

Mola mola (Linnaeus, 1758)

1758. Tetraodon mola Linnaeus , Systema Naturae, (Ed. X) 1: 334 (Type locality: [In M. Mediterraneo] Mediterranean Sea).

2017. Mola mola : Sawai et al., Ichthyol. Res., 65 (1): (12).

Diagnostic Characters: Body short, deep, highly compressed laterally, almost circular in lateral profile and devoid of caudal peduncle and typical caudal fin. Mouth small, terminal; teeth beak like, united and without median suture, palatine teeth absent. Gill opening small located in front of pectoral fin. Dorsal and anal fin very high with short base, located to opposite to each other and both are triangular in shape; pectoral fin upward directed, small and rounded; ventral fin absent; caudal fin replaced by leather like lobe called pseudocaudal fin or clavus, the edge of the clavus rounded without a distinct median extension, supported by 12 fin rays elements of which 8 bears ossicles which are widely separated, less broad than spaces between them. Skin leathery covered with small conical scales.

Colour: Body colour grey with silver shade on the ventral side and dark shade on the dorsal side and fins.

Morphometric Characters

Characters Measurement Dorsal soft rays 15

Anal soft rays 14

Pectoral soft rays 12

% of Total length

Standard length 87.64-88.03

Head length 30.89-31.44

Body depth 63.67-66.22

Eye diameter 8.02-8.34

Snout length 16.85-17.44

Clavus 12.35-12.02

Preanal length 51.82-52.32 Predorsal length 58.23-58.54 Prepectoral fin length 34.12-34.87 Preorbital length 1.62-1.79

Distribution: Circumglobal in all tropical and temperate seas. Eastern Pacific: British Columbia, Canada to Peru and Chile. Western Pacific: Japan to Australia. Eastern Atlantic: Scandinavia to South Africa. Western Atlantic: Canada to Argentina ( Froese and Pauly, 2017). This species recently reported from Iceland (Palsson and Astthorsson, 2016), Black Sea ( Ozturk and Ozbulut, 2016) and New Zealand ( Nyegaard et al., 2017), also from Norwegian coast ( Frafjord et al., 2017).