Ocean Sunfish

Alrighty! So after yesterday's blog, I decided to write an entry about the sunfish. Why, you ask? Because I have never heard of a sunfish until I was trying to figure out what MANBOU was from the cracker shapes on the box of OTTOTTO. I was searching online for the translation for like 30 minutes. It was not until I was telling my friends about the cracker shape, which I described as a pacman ghost with Kirby arms...or a rocket, and telling them I was pretty darned sure I was reading it correctly, when I realized I was not. I was reading the tenten as "PO" versus "BO", which made a HUGE difference. HAHA, guess I need to brush up on my Japanese.

If Kirby and the orange ghost, Clyde, had a baby this is what it would look like XD

ROCKET FISH!

ANYWAY...about the fish:

The look: According to wikipedia, the ocean sunfish "is the heaviest known bony fish in the world" and "has an average adult weight of 2,200 pounds." The sunfish looks like a somewhat flattened fish head with a tail attached to the back and can be as tall as they are wide when their dorsal and ventral fins are extended. They are in the same order as pufferfish.

Interesting fact: The dorsal fin of the sunfish can be mistaken for that of a shark.

(found this picture online)

Where they are found: They live in tropical and temperate waters around the world.

What they eat: Mainly jellyfish, but there is not much nutritional value so they consume large quantities to obtain and maintain their large bulky size.

Babies: The female sunfish produce more eggs than any other known vertebrates. The fry look like little mini pufferfish with large fins (perhaps that is why there is fugu shapes within the ottotto snack package. Eating mommy AND baby).

Enemies: Sea lions, orcas, sharks, and...HUMANS (DUN DUN DUN...big surprise, right?). Not only are sunfish a delicacy and eaten in places like Japan, Korea, and Taiwan (ALL ASIAN), but they get killed in netting and are harmed or killed due to trash in the waters, like plastic bags. DOUBLE HUMAN WHAMMY.

Cooking: How can sunfish be cooked? Well when googled, sunfish gave me other things like Hawaiian sunfish, AKA talapia and other normal looking fish, i.e bass. When googling "ocean sunfish,"I didn't get any recipe hits, but there were 2 dishes that I found:

teriyaki?

sashimi

Looks delicious. I think it would be interesting to try this fish one day, but since it only seems that it is served in Asian countries...I will have a lot of money saving to do before that ever happens.