A giant and extremely rare sunfish has washed up on a California beach - stunning early morning visitors who stumbled across the bizarre six-foot-long creature.
The hoodwinker sunfish, or Mola tecta, was discovered at Doran Regional Park in Bodega Bay, about 60 miles north of San Francisco - made famous as the setting of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 film The Birds. The creature measured around six feet long and three feet wide, its body dwarfing the usual beach debris.
With its tiny mouth and lack of a visible tail, the strange-looking fish is so unusual that scientists only recognized the species in 2017.
Marine biologist Marianne Nyegaard of New Zealand, who first described the species, confirmed to the East Bay Times that the stranded animal was indeed a hoodwinker.
She said it could be distinguished from the more common ocean sunfish because 'the clavus is quite narrow and there is no head bump or chin bump.'
