\n The sunfish (mola mola) was discovered on the sand at Holme-next-the-Sea by Emma Cockburn.\n<\/p>\n
\n The fish – the second largest bony fish in the world – is found around the globe but in UK waters is more common off the south west coast.\n<\/p>\n
\n It is listed as vulnerable on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List, because it is often a bycatch of the fishing industry.\n<\/p>\n
\n And now the Norfolk Wildlife Trust (NWT) has explained why the fish ended up in Norfolk.\n<\/p>\n
\n ‘Sunfish are such a unique species to see here in Norfolk,” a spokeswoman said. “It’s unusual for them to be found on our coastline, as they tend to thrive in much warmer waters.\n<\/p>\n
\n “Despite this, sunfish have been found along the Norfolk coast in recent years, including at NWT Holme Dunes.\n<\/p>\n
\n “The fish are likely to have been following jellyfish – their preferred food source – and found themselves in difficulties in the much colder waters of the North Sea.\n<\/p>\n
\n “Seeing unusual species in Norfolk appears to be becoming more common, and could be linked to climate change and warming seas.”\n<\/p>\n
\n Sunfish can reach 1,000kg \u2013 the weight of a small car \u2013 and more than three metres in length.\n<\/p>\n
\n Those that reach the UK tend to be much smaller, but they are still round and remarkably narrow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The sunfish (mola mola) was discovered on the sand at Holme-next-the-Sea by Emma Cockburn. The fish – the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":301620,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-309740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309740\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/301620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}