{"id":75879,"date":"2025-10-12T13:45:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-12T13:45:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/75879\/"},"modified":"2025-10-12T13:45:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-12T13:45:10","slug":"rare-ocean-sunfish-found-washed-up-off-donegal-coast-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/75879\/","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":75880,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[851,2885,1485,42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-75879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-biodiversity","tag-climate-change","tag-donegal","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75879\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}