this is the ocean sunfish also known as the mola mola it looks like a prehistoric shark that lost a tail in an epic battle and might seem to be the world's weirdest and most defenseless fish in the world it can barely swim and has been described as a giant drifting all-you-can-eat buffet for predators so why is this fish not extinct yet resembling a big floating blob the ocean sunfish is the world's largest bony fish reaching up to 11 feet and 2.5 tons that could be found in temperate and tropical oceans around the world and generally hang out at depths of 160 to 650 feet but can go much deeper on occasion but let's get back to the anatomy of this weird fish due to its enormously large body and a back fin which they are born with but simply never grows they can barely swim and often rely on drifting with the current this means that it's limited to mostly eating jellyfish one of the few creatures that is even worse at swimming than itself it doesn't hunt its prey so much as bump into them with its face no wonder why some scientists call it the largest species of Plankton due to being so immobile and unable to clean itself the ocean sunfish is typically covered in parasites these fish are actually known to deliberately float on their sides at this surface in the hopes that passing seagulls will peck the parasites off them you might wonder at this stage how do such creatures even survive in oceans filled with predators the main reason is that from predator's perspective they are a ton of work for very little reward generally ocean sunfish have thick leathery skin and tough scales and are physically large and difficult to swallow whole besides being difficult to eat and there's almost no nutritional reward under that thick leathery difficult to bite through skin killer whales sea lions and sharks often avoid the ocean sunfish to prey on easier targets with higher levels of nutrition evolutionarily the ocean sunfish has given up flexibility and speed for being very difficult for predators to eat of course they are occasionally attacked by Predators or snagged in drift Gill Nets but luckily they produce up to 300 million eggs at one time which will succumb to the odds against surviving as such a clumsy and defenseless creature in the open ocean thank you for watching this video hope you enjoyed it and please like And subscribe for future videos