{"id":117450,"date":"2025-10-12T13:39:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-12T13:39:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/117450\/"},"modified":"2025-10-12T13:39:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-12T13:39:09","slug":"rare-ocean-sunfish-found-washed-up-off-donegal-coast-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/117450\/","title":{"rendered":"Rare ocean sunfish found washed up off Donegal coast \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">A rare ocean sunfish has been found washed up off the coast of west <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/donegal\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/donegal\/\">Donegal<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">The huge fish was discovered by two friends out walking on Saturday morning at the Back Strand in Falcarragh.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The fish, which has a disc shape, was dead.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">It was found by friends Mary Doherty and Adele Paton.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Ocean sunfish, which can weigh between 247kg and 1,000kg (545 and 2,205lbs) when fully grown, are native to tropical and temperate waters around the world.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">However, because of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/ireland\/2025\/05\/22\/extreme-marine-heatwave-recorded-in-waters-off-irish-coast\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/ireland\/2025\/05\/22\/extreme-marine-heatwave-recorded-in-waters-off-irish-coast\/\">an increase in ocean temperatures<\/a>, they are now found occasionally in Irish waters.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">They survive mostly by eating jellyfish, squid and other small fish.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">It is not known how this particular sunfish died although they often become caught up in gillnets.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">It is one of the largest boney fish in the sea and gets its name as it sunbathes on the surface of the sea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A rare ocean sunfish has been found washed up off the coast of west Donegal. The huge fish&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":117451,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1868,9,10,442,6368,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-117450","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-biodiversity","9":"tag-breaking-news","10":"tag-breakingnews","11":"tag-climate-change","12":"tag-donegal","13":"tag-eire","14":"tag-featured-news","15":"tag-featurednews","16":"tag-headlines","17":"tag-ie","18":"tag-ireland","19":"tag-latest-news","20":"tag-latestnews","21":"tag-main-news","22":"tag-mainnews","23":"tag-news","24":"tag-top-stories","25":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117450\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}