Outer Bay Animals

Ocean sunfish

Ocean sunfish, or molas, look like the invention of a mad scientist. Huge and flat, these silvery-gray fish have tiny mouths and big eyes that vanish into an even bigger body with a truncated tail. Topping out around 5,000 pounds, molas are the world’s heaviest bony fish. (This category doesn’t count sharks and rays. The whale shark is 10 times bigger.)

Pelagic ray

Unlike other rays, which spend most of their time buried on the sandy seafloor, pelagic stingrays spend their time in open waters. They are distinguished by their diamond-shaped bodies with rounded snouts and streamlined eyes that don’t protrude from their bodies. The pelagic ray is dark purplish above and purplish to gray underneath. This coloration makes the ray harder for predators to see from above, as the ray’s dark back blends with dark waters below, making it almost “disappear” from view.

Scalloped hammerhead shark

With that wide, thick head shaped like a double-headed hammer, it’s easy to identify a hammerhead shark. You can tell it from other hammerheads by the ridges along the front edge of its head. The shark’s eyes and nostrils are located at the extreme ends of its head. Perhaps this unusual shape gives the sharks added lift and lets them make sharper turns than other sharks.

Moon jelly

This alien-looking creature is named for its translucent, moonlike circular bell. Instead of long, trailing tentacles, moon jellies have a short, fine fringe (cilia) that sweeps food toward the mucous layer on the edge of the bell. Prey is stored in pouches until the oral arms pick it up and begin to digest it.

Pacific bluefin tuna

Bluefin tuna are some of the largest and fastest fish in the ocean—they’re powerful swimmers, built for endurance and speed. To help conserve energy on their long-distance journeys, tuna’s bodies are almost perfectly streamlined, reducing drag around their fins. And tuna can retract those fins so water flows more smoothly over their bodies. This makes them super-streamlined.