Ocean City

Rare oversized sunfish washes ashore

July 21, 2008
By Brian Shane
Staff Writer

OCEAN CITY — The 400-pound carcass of a rare deep-water fish washed ashore at 26th Street, apparently killed by the propeller of a large boat.

Ocean City lifeguards found the Ocean Sunfish with four parallel slices to its body, with part of its head also missing from a propeller strike, said Beach Patrol Captain Butch Arbin.

“We just don't normally see those type of fish,” he said. “People on the beach were very interested. It's just such a strange-looking fish, it looks like it's not all there. They don't look like a whole fish when you see it laying there.”

The ocean sunfish, so nicknamed for its common basking near the surface while on its side, can grow up to 11 feet long and 3,000 lbs. It lacks a typical tail and appears to be one enormous fish head. It propels itself through the water with long, thin dorsal fins that extend up and down from its body. When its top fin breaks the surface, it can be mistaken for the dorsal fin of a shark.

Arbin said a crowd of about 50 people surrounded the lifeguards as they examined the carcass. Later, several hundred more people were able to see it before Public Works employees came to dispose of it.

“They thought, ‘How dangerous is it? Are there more out there?’ They just don't know what it is. Of course, once people see a small crowd, people come to see what they crowd's looking at. Very quickly the crowd grows, exponentially,” Arbin said.

It took Arbin and two lifeguards to drag the estimated 400-lb. fish off the beach. If it were washed back into the ocean, the heavy carcass could float away and become a danger to swimmers, surfers or boaters. Also, the decaying body of the sunfish could have been harboring bacteria.

Arbin said the town’s Public Works department will dispose of dead fish, but not the carcasses of whales or sea turtles, which instead are sent to the Maryland Department of Natural Resources to investigate cause of death.

410-213-9442, Ext. 14