Welcome! The giant ocean sunfishes, family Molidae, are some of Earth’s most fascinating yet mysterious creatures. These jelly-eating giants hold the record for being the world’s heaviest bony fish and occupy a unique place in the open ocean web of life. This site is dedicated to consolidating our current state of knowledge and announcing our latest research discoveries and those of others as they become available. Be sure to check out the research section and if you have recently published something on mola or produced a film with mola in it please, do let us know--we’d love to add this information to the site. We are also excited to share a new feature that involves you! If you are certain you have seen a mola, please add your sighting to our growing database by clicking here.

We welcome your comments, suggestions, additions, deletions and hope you enjoy the site. Dive in!

Slender mola sighted in South Africa - April 11, 2008
A specimen from the most elusive genus of sunfish, Ranzania, was spotted April 11th 2008 off the Atlantic coast of South Africa on the Cape Peninsula at Scarborough Beach. Jules de Combs spotted the wondrous slender mola, Ranzania laevis and sent in a sighting and some photos. These sunfishes described by Pennant in 1776 are rather diminutive as far as molas go--growing no more than about 100 cm. They are capable of great speeds however and have been caught by fishermen in Hawaii who were trolling for skipjack tuna. For accounts of Ranzania in South African waters, see Heemstra, P.C., 1986. Molidae. p. 907-908. In M.M. Smith and P.C. Heemstra (eds.) Smiths' sea fishes. Springer-Verlag, Berlin. We are collecting genetic tissues of these animals for populations analyses so if you ever come across freshly dead ones, take a small sample freeze it and contact us.