Massive sunfish washes up on Ameland

A massive sunfish measuring 2 meters by 1.84 meters was spotted floating off the North Sea coast of Ameland on Monday afternoon. Sea animal rescue team RTZ and Animal Ambulance Ameland responded to see if they could help the fish, but it was already dead. According to the organizations, it is the largest sunfish to wash ashore in the Netherlands this century.

RTZ and the Animal Ambulance brought the sunfish, scientific name Mola Mola, to the beach to measure it. It was quite the task. "An adult animal weighs an average of 1 ton and is 1.8 meters tall, but there are also specimens that weighed 2,300 kilos and were 4 meters tall at the fins," the organizations said on Facebook.

The animal will be transferred to Naturalis in Leiden to be weighed and further studied.

According to NU.nl, a larger sunfish washed up in the Netherlands on 13 December 1889 - exactly 132 years before Monday's discovery. That animal was over 2 meters in both length and width. It can be seen at Naturalis.