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!

Bali 2008

This October, the mola team headed East--far East. We enthusiastically accepted an invitation from marine conservationist Dr. Mark Erdmann to join Conservation InternationaI, Indonesia and the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) in conducting a Rapid Biological Assessment (RAP)* for the Nusa Penida area.

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Exploring new ways of non-invasively investigating molas - August 25, 2008

We're currently exploring whether or not an exciting new technique for identifying individual whale sharks using NASA methodology for identifying star patterning can also be applied to mola populations--particularly those extra-spotted ones. First stop Galapagos. For more information about this technique see National Geographic News http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/08/
080825-whale-sharks-missions_2.html