Medary.com

Sunfish

Apropos of our encounter with sunfish off Africa, this story via Jungle Trader from Germany's Der Spiegel:

A total of four ocean sunfish have been spotted along Germany's Baltic coast over the last week, far away from their habitat in tropical and temperate waters. Biologists say the awkward, slow-moving and friendly giants are likely to have been swept in by storms.

Maritime experts and beachcombers have been puzzled by the appearance of several sunfish -- strange, disk-shaped creatures that can reach a length of up to 3.30 meters and a weight of over two tonnes -- along Germany's Baltic Sea coast in recent days, thousands of miles away from their normal habitat in tropical and temperate waters around the world.

A fisherman said on Saturday he had caught a 10-kilo, 60-centimeter-long sunfish out of the water near the island of Rügen. Last Wednesday, walkers found two sunfish, one 80 centimetres long and the other a full meter, lying dead on a beach east of the city of Kiel. A day before, passersby had spotted a smaller sunfish that still showed signs of life, and had pushed it back in the water.