[Non-ceph] Monster sunfish

[Tintenfisch]

Sure is.

 

[sorseress]

Good luck!

 

[OB]

How do you turn it over? Good luck on the mouth, especially...

I've got some beluga sturgeon, a couple of arapaima and a record wels catfish in the freezer, if you're interested

 

[Steve O'Shea]

Hey, our fush made the papers - amazing since it's been a huge news day down here (politics and all).

 

[sorseress]

From the article:

"He spent $5000 shipping it to Auckland in a refrigerated railway container, and said he was likely to spend another $5000 before the week was out on the silicone mould and preserving the skeleton.

Though not a rich man, Dr O'Shea said it was money well spent."

This reads like you spent your own money on this....Say it isn't so!

 

[Steve O'Shea]

Robbing Peter to pay Paul, that's all.

Hopefully we can recover some of the costs of this exercise by on-selling casts; someone has already asked to buy the mould!!! (that's a negative, sorry).

 

[Steve O'Shea]

Here are a few more pics courtesy of Emma Beatson (here at AUT - studying whale diet) [that's Emma crouching down next to the fish in one of the shots].

 

[sorseress]

That is a truly awesome beast!

 

[OB]

"There is a season, turn, turn, turn"

Did you manage already? Maybe half is actually sufficient, if you intend wall dispay, rather than suspended...

Quite curious about the end result (hope to be able to see it when next in Auckland )

 

[Sordes]

I didn´t see this thread in the last days, so my suggestion for another type of cast is too late. I have a book about the dessection of fish for fishing trophies, which shows several comparably easy ways to make such things at home. One of the easiest ways was a simple two-part gypsum-form which can be filled with hardening foam or epoxy resin. As molas are very compact animals without any thin spines or fins, such a form had probably well worked, and is furthermore very very cheap in contrast to silicone moulds. I have never tried it (because I go only fishing when I´m in holiday), but I have made uncountable other casts with gypsum for a completely other purpose, and the surface details are really fine.The huge size and the weight could cause several problems, but there would be surely solutions. Perhaps you can try it the next time if you get a smaller sunfish.

 

[Steve O'Shea]

There are some things that you do once in a lifetime because the opportunity never presents itself twice, and then there are the things that you do once in a lifetime simply because you swear you'd never do them again.

Learn from our lesson here; don't even contemplate boning out a gargantuan sunfish!! In fact, let TONMO.com be a sunfish-free zone from this day forth!!

We are exhausted! Into day 3 tomorrow - the cleanup day - and what a cleanup! A whale is 10 orders of magnitude easier to process than a sunfish! Try cutting through skin 5 inches thick (no joke!!), like that of a shark in that it is covered in denticles, each intent on shredding you to pieces!

We've had nearly 10 people working on this animal; we all dislike sunfish intensely! These fish are horrible!

 

[Sordes]

Could you perhaps post a cross-section picture of the skin?
By the way, you probably already know this very nice site about the dissection of a sharptail mola, if not, it could be interesting: http://fishanatomy.net/webpages/fish/mola/mola.htm

 

[Jean]

There are some things that you do once in a lifetime because the opportunity never presents itself twice, and then there are the things that you do once in a lifetime simply because you swear you'd never do them again.

Learn from our lesson here; don't even contemplate boning out a gargantuan sunfish!! In fact, let TONMO.com be a sunfish-free zone from this day forth!!

We are exhausted! Into day 3 tomorrow - the cleanup day - and what a cleanup! A whale is 10 orders of magnitude easier to process than a sunfish! Try cutting through skin 5 inches thick (no joke!!), like that of a shark in that it is covered in denticles, each intent on shredding you to pieces!

We've had nearly 10 people working on this animal; we all dislike sunfish intensely! These fish are horrible!

All I can say is.........he he he!

J

 

[nanoteuthis]

Hey, aren't Mola Mola the largest bony fish in the world? Yeah, I know, not the largest fish fish in the world, that'd be Whale Sharks, but they're condri.... chondich.... condrichth.... uh, thingies with notochords.

Mola Mola always struck me as rather placid beasties -- maybe cruising along with all that attached fauna tends to produce a stoical acceptance of life's emotional baggage.

Well, it appears to work that way for sloths, anyhow....

Tani
(4:30 a.m. with too much green tea in my bloodstream
and not enough digestible leftovers in the fridge)

 

[Steve O'Shea]

One of my cobbers here at work (AUT/EOS), Steve Cook, has put together a wee time-lapse photography movie of the 'filleting', at least for day 1 (we didn't do this for day 2). What you'll see is 5 hours of hard work condensed into a few seconds. Unfortunately I cannot add the file (technology challenges me), so have sent to Tony.

We were absolutely shattered Saturday eve - so-much-so we just walked away from our bags of dead and deceased fish, intending to come back Sunday morn and take it away. Well, broken and exhausted on Sunday morn I thought ... Sunday eve will be just fine'. So, Sunday eve, with a trailer on the back of the wagon, I drove in, only to find that the sunfish remains were gone! Apparently we had placed the remains next to the intake for the airconditioning of an adjacent apartment complex, and the smell was outrageous - people puking and what not. AUT Security were called in and being unable to contact me ended up disposing of near 2 tons of fish guts themselves! (I missed many calls on the phone on Sunday). My name is MUD!