Giant Ocean Sunfish Sighted in Larchmont Harbor

by Judy Silberstein

(November 2, 2006) A Mamaroneck resident fishing for sea bass in Larchmont Harbor early Wednesday morning encountered an immense sea creature with a shark-like dorsal fin. “I saw to my great surprise, what looked like a good-sized fin breaking the surface of the water, almost lazily slapping the water. My first thought was …shark, definitely not…wrong shape and moving too slow,” reported Bob Garry in an e-mail to the Gazette.

Was it a disoriented whale?

“It took a few more minutes before I got a good look and realized that it was a large (estimated 10-feet ) ocean sunfish,” Mr. Garry concluded.

The ocean sunfish has a huge head compared to its stumpy body and short tail. WIth its sharp dorsal fin, it is often mistaken for a shark. Image courtesy of Dianna Schulte from the Blue Ocean Society.

Mr. Garry followed the creature in his fishing boat as it headed into Pirates Cove. Meanwhile, Liz Tremain sighted the fin from her kitchen window and came running with her children down their dock for a closer look.

“I spend tons and tons of time on the water and this is very unusual,” said Mr. Garry, who grew up in Larchmont and has spent much of his 48 years fishing here and elsewhere. He is familiar with the large, slow-moving fish and has seen them out by Block Island, but never this close to shore on the Long Island Sound. “They kind of cruise with the wind and the waves – I wouldn’t be surprised if in all this weather it wasn’t blown off course,” he surmised.

Saturday's gale force winds had certainly churned up the Long Island Sound and driven other large (if inanimate) objects ashore. (See: Weekend Storm.)

Photo courtesy of Jackson Myers who encountered this large sunfish while surfing on Florida's Atlantic coast.

The Pirates Cove visitor turned on its side and floated on the surface, which for most fish would be an indicator of distress. Not here: sunfish get their name from their tendency to “sunbathe” on top of the water.

“My son, Max, is a humongous fisherman and he was beyond thrilled to see such an unusual fish in the harbor circling the dock,” reported Ms. Tremain. “Our kitchen overlooks the harbor and we noticed one of the fins. I jumped and was screaming for my son to come out,” reported Ms. Tremain. “The dorsal fin was a good foot and a half above the water.”

Despite the menacing dorsal fin and its immense size, ocean sunfish are docile creatures related to the much smaller puffers. Because they are relatively weak swimmers, they move with the currents. Though rare in local harbors, they are found in all tropical and temperate oceans, where they feed on crustaceans, jellyfish, and other zooplankton. Neither the experts at Mamaroneck Bait & Tackle at Harbor Island nor the captain of the SoundWaters educational schooner had heard of an ocean sunfish appearing in this part of the Long Island Sound.

"That's completely extraordinary," said Toar Palar, a long-time Larchmont resident and avid fisherman, when told about the sunfish. He's never seen one in Long Island Sound, where he's fished for decades. "What the heck is it doing here? It's probably in trouble," he surmised.

If the Pirates Cove creature is as big as Mr. Garry estimated, it would be large, even for a sunfish. An average adult weighs around 2000 pounds and measures 6 feet from ”snout tip” to truncated tail and over 7 feet from the tips of the dorsal and anal fins. According to OceanSunfish.org, a website maintained by sunfish researchers, the largest sunfish – and the largest bony fish – ever sighted weighed over twice the average, 4927 pounds, and measured 10 by 14 feet.

“I’ve been here for 30 years – growing up on the Sound side [of the peninsula] - and the only thing comparable was a sighting of harbor seals,” said Ms. Tremain. “They were big but nothing like this.”

She had trouble convincing her husband, reached by phone at this office, that the huge fish was “for real.” “Thank goodness Bobby Garry was there as my witness or this would turn into a complete fish tale,” she laughed.

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