What About Bob?

One of my new adventures is working with the Mola mola (Ocean sunfish).  I will be partaking in feeding them at least 2x/week and if things work out I'll be more heavily involved once the new year comes.  Each year the aquarists get to put in a request for which galleries and teams they'd like to work with, giving everyone a chance to gain experience in different areas and most importantly areas they are excited to be in.

But for now I'll be happy just getting to feed them.  It is part of a growth study but the other goal is to get them target feeding and exhibit ready for when the big open ocean tank opens in July.  As of now there are two molas that are being trained to come up to separate targets (a yellow star and a purple ball) but two more were just collected yesterday.  This is the time of year to start seeing juvenile molas so I believe we are going to be collecting as many as we can in order to start working with them to figure out which ones will stay for the exhibit.  If we find they are not suited for this they will be released back to the wild.

These guys are not very big, maybe 2'-3' around but they can get up to 10' in diameter and up over 2000lbs.  They are not the most exciting fish because they basically just stay at the surface and slowly swim around.  We are feeding them squid, shrimp, and clams but in the wild they mainly feed on jellyfish with the occasional squid or fish and fry.  They are really cool to watch and work with though because they are such a unique fish and not too many people have worked closely with them in captivity...just another bonus here at the Monterey Bay Aquarium!!!