On Tuesday, August 3, 2004, at around 8 in the evening, I took the two girls out in
the Whaler for a quick sunset cruise on Barnegat Bay. Look at what we
found, floating in the middle of the main channel between mark 49A and mark 51,
off of Loveladies:
What in the world was it? Whatever it was, it was very dead. At first glance we thought it was a turtle, but then we spotted the eye (near the upper left in the above photo) and realized that it must be a very bizarre fish. We looped a docking line around it and proceeded to tow it home. We took it at a very leisurely 1.2 knot, and even at that speed it kept diving down out of sight. One of the girls suggested that we had discovered a hitherto-unknown sea monster, and the other suggested that we call the creature "Hieronymus" after Hieronymus Bosch, the fifteenth-century painter of bizarre and nightmarish scenes.
Back at our dock, my wife immediately identified Hieronymus as an Ocean Sunfish, a specimen of which she once saw at the Camden aquarium. The Ocean Sunfish (scientific name Mola mola) is a pelagic fish whose diet consists mainly of jellyfish, and which is widely distributed throughout the warmer waters of the world's oceans. They attain a length of 10 feet, a height of 11 feet (including the dorsal and anal fins), and a weight of 4400 pounds. Our little Hieronymus was only 4 feet, 6 inches long, 2 feet 8 inches high (excluding the fins, which were each about 22 inches long), and about 8 inches wide. Based on these measurements, we estimated his weight at around 400 pounds.
His skin is
very thick and tough, without scales, and despite the decidedly ripe odor which
was very apparent when we hoisted him (upside down) out of the water, he showed
no sign of falling apart. Obviously, we couldn't keep him at our
dock indefinitely, but I didn't know whether someone might be interested in him,
so I called the Coast Guard at Barnegat Light.
It turned out that the Coast Guard had spotted Hieronymus
earlier on, but decided to let him drift. They advised me to cut him loose
and "let nature take its course," and so on the morning of August 4 we let him
go, a few hundred yards west of mark 49A. I wonder how many other people
will spot him floating about the bay before he finally decomposes beyond
recognition.