{"id":839841,"date":"2026-09-07T20:28:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-07T20:28:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/839841\/"},"modified":"2026-09-07T20:28:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-07T20:28:10","slug":"rare-encounter-with-elusive-ocean-giant-off-mayo-coast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/839841\/","title":{"rendered":"Rare encounter with elusive ocean giant off Mayo coast"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Passengers on a boat trip off Acaill, Co Mayo, recently enjoyed a rare encounter with an ocean sunfish.<\/p>\n<p>The sunfish &#8211; the largest boney fish in the world &#8211; was swimming at the surface when it approached the Achill Sea Safari RIB on an excursion earlier this month.<\/p>\n<p>They are typically found in tropical and temperate waters but they are occasionally seen from boats in Irish waters during the summer.<\/p>\n<p>Sunfish can reach up to 3.2 metres in length, and weigh up to 2.3 tonnes.<\/p>\n<p>The sunfish was the latest exciting encounter for the Achill Sea Safari &#8211; a humpback whale was spotted in Acaill waters on several occasions over the past three weeks.<\/p>\n<p>On the way back from Achill Head, the tour spotted the ocean sunfish in Keem Bay, only two weeks after witnessing a humpback whale in Achill waters for the first time in 14 years.<\/p>\n<p>Watch the video to see the mola mola, otherwise known as an ocean sunfish.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Passengers on a boat trip off Acaill, Co Mayo, recently enjoyed a rare encounter with an ocean sunfish.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":839842,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[79,201],"class_list":["post-839841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=839841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839841\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/839842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=839841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=839841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=839841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}