More and more mola mola in Bras d’Or
Two sunfish wash ashore in recent weeks
People can expect to more and more mola mola in Cape Breton.
In the last month, two ocean sunfish — also known by the genus and species names mola mola —washed up onshore in the Bras d’Or Lake. One was discovered at the East Bay sandbar in November and another was found more recently in Irish Vale.
Annamarie Hatcher, an ecologist and board member of the Bras d’Or Lake Biosphere Reserve Association, said both sunfish were likely blown in from the Atlantic Ocean during stormy weather and then starved because the Bras d’Or Lake doesn’t have jellyfish or plankton to sustain them at this time of the year.
She said more of the large, disc-like fish, which can weigh up to 1,000 pounds, will be pushed into the lake in the future as nor’easters increase in frequency and intensity.
“This is going to happen more and more because of the ocean warming and because of the fact we’re getting more and more stormy weather. It’s the stormy water that pushes these water masses into the Bras d’Or,” said Hatcher, who writes a regular column for the Cape Breton Post. “They have a limited ability to navigate, so once they are brought into the Bras d’Or they would have a hard time finding their way out again.”
Sunfish aren’t complete strangers to Cape Breton.
In the 1990s, a trio named Sunfish helped forge the local indie-rock scene and even won a MuchMusic Video Award for “Difference“from the album “Mola Mola.”
Hatcher said there have been four documented sightings in the Bras d’Or since 2005 and it’s not unusual to see them off the Atlantic Ocean where they generally hang around the surface and feed on jellyfish.
“People often mistake them for sharks because they’ve got that dorsal fin,” she said, adding that the sunfish’s strange appearance often puzzles people who find them washed up on beaches. “It’s ugly! They’re very kind of truncated — they look like a big hockey puck with a fin — and they’ve got a very odd-looking mouth — it looks like a beak. Basically, it’s not an attractive fish.”
Sunfish aren’t the only tropical and sub-tropical marine creatures that are turning up unexpectedly in the Bras d’Or.
Hatcher said people near Eskasoni reported seeing large groups of eagles feeding on a school of needlefish that was swept into the Bras d’Or by a storm a couple of years ago. Cape Breton also used to mark the northern end of the striped bass’s range but they have now pushed their way up to Newfoundland and Labrador. And in February, a leatherback turtle was discovered dead in the ice of Bras d’Or Lake in Islandview.
While none of these species are residents of the Bras d’Or, Hatcher said the lake is “geologically complex” and there are pockets of water that are home to Arctic and subtropical species that arrived thousands of years ago.
“Maybe this will happen now,” she said. “Maybe there will species that come in that will be able to live in the Bras d’Or, that will establish populations here.”