Moreover, in comparison, tuna swims very fast. Their average speed can reach 60 kilometers per hour, and the fastest instantaneous speed can reach 160 kilometers per hour. So it is relatively difficult to catch tuna. However, Molas are different. Even if it is eaten by natural enemies, it will not escape, and it is easier to catch. So why do so few people eat molas? Let's get to know each other.
About mola fish
Mola is a strange-looking fish. Their bodies are wide and flat, and they like to lie flat on the sea, which looks like a overturned car from a distance, hence the name.
Besides Mola, it has several common names, such as Mola, Moon Fish and Mola. Mola is similar to our common Mola because it lies flat on the sea and its skin is rough and gray, while moon fish likes to feed on the sea, and its food is mainly jellyfish and zooplankton. These prey glow at night, so they look like the moon surrounded by stars from a distance.
As for Mola, it is called Mola because Mola is a large fish and cannot regulate its body temperature like other fish. So they like to float in the sun on the sea during the day, and floating on the sea has another advantage, which is to clean up their parasites.
Molas have become the parasitic hosts of more than 40 kinds of parasites because of their slow speed, and most of them float on the body surface, which is beneficial for seabirds to help clean up the parasites on the body surface.
In a broad sense, Molotomata is the general name of all fishes, including Molotomata, Molotomata and Molotomata. In these three subordinates, there are only five kinds of animals, including molas and molas.
Among these five species, the mola is the smallest and the longest, about 1 m. The other four species are larger, with an average body length of about 2 meters, a body width of about 2.5 meters (including the length of dorsal fin and gluteal fin) and an average weight of about 600 kilograms.
Sunfish
Molas have an interesting mouth. They always grin. This is because their teeth are highly fused and beak-shaped, which makes them unable to close their mouths and can only be half-opened. And because the fins of molas are highly alienated, they only have fins on the upper and lower sides of their tails, and they swim like rowing by swinging these two fins.
Mola that has been bitten and doesn't know how to escape.
There are many articles about Mola on the Internet, all of which describe it as a silly fish, which moves very slowly and does not run away even if it is bitten by natural enemies. So is this a misunderstanding or a real thing?
First of all, as a large fish, Mola is also very weak in fighting capacity, and there are bound to be large marine predators eyeing them, such as sharks, killer whales and sea lions, which are the three natural enemies of Mola.
Secondly, molas can't even escape when they meet these natural enemies, but they can't escape, because molas only have two slender fins and they don't have swim bladders, which leads to their swimming speed of only 2-3 kilometers per hour. Among its three natural enemies, even the slow-swimming sea lion has a speed of 30 kilometers per hour. So molas can't run away when they meet natural enemies.
Why can Molas with almost zero escape ability live to this day?
It is a miracle that a big fish can live today, because its self-protection ability is very poor. After all, there are too many large carnivores in the ocean. However, Molas can live to this day, and the population is huge. There must be a way to survive.
First of all, Molas are the most reproductive vertebrates. Among vertebrates, the reproductive capacity of fish is relatively strong, and the absolute reproductive capacity of most fish is between tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands. Under normal circumstances, fish with absolute fecundity of several hundred thousand are considered as "high yield", but molas are more fertile, with an absolute fecundity of 300 million, which means that molas can lay 300 million eggs at a time.
With such a high-yield capacity, even if the eggs and young fish have great losses, the molas that can grow up successfully are also a huge number, so living is one of the main reasons for their survival so far.
Secondly, although Molas have poor swimming ability, their diving ability is not weak. Molas can dive to the depth of 800 meters, which actually avoids the main activity depth of most predators. In addition to sunbathing, molas basically move vertically up and down in the depth range of 100-600 meters, which also helps them avoid the search of many predators.
Molas are big and easy to catch. Why do few people eat it?
Mola is a large fish, which is often caught by gill net fishing (fishing with a boat dragging a vertical net). This is because gill nets often fish at a depth of 0-200 meters, and molas like to move at this depth. In addition, they are slow to move and have poor ability to struggle. Once they encounter gill nets, they will basically not run away.
According to the statistics of National Marine Fisheries Association, Molas from1990-1998,26.1%were caught by drift nets, and the total catch exceeded 26,000. However, fishing for mola fish did not make fishermen happy, but made them very upset, because almost no one would pay for mola fish, so the amount of mola fish discarded after fishing reached about 42. 1%.
In drift-net fishing in Spain, the proportion of molas is as high as 93% (1993, and the average in other years is over 70%), and these molas are usually pulled up and discarded.
It can be seen that Mola molas are very easy to catch, and there are a lot of them, but in the world, except for a few people in Japan, Taiwan Province Province, North Korea and other countries and regions, others usually scoff at Mola molas. Why? There are two main reasons:
Number one: it's not delicious. There is a kind of fish that is very big and easy to catch, but it is not accepted, so it must be unpalatable. Mola is like this. It can be described as rough skin, many bones and hard. After treatment, the really edible part of the mola fish does not exceed 65,438+00% of its body weight, and the meat quality is very tough. I had the privilege of eating it once, and it felt like chewing rubber.
It is because of this smell that most people have no appetite for molas.
Second: there may be security risks. According to the food analysis of mola fish, some scholars think that its internal organs may be toxic, such as mola fish. Some scholars think that it should contain palytoxin, and Molas all eat jellyfish, jellyfish have jellyfish toxin, and some Molas also eat tetrodotoxin containing tetrodotoxin. Therefore, some scholars think that Mola may have residual toxins and it is not recommended to eat it.
finally
Molas are not stupid. They know how to stay at the same water depth as little as possible to avoid being killed by natural enemies. Moreover, their rough skin and poor taste make many predators flinch. However, their swimming speed is really flattering, and they are called "sloths" in the ocean, and they can't escape when they meet natural enemies.
As for why humans seldom eat Mola, it is mainly because it is not delicious, otherwise it will not become the biggest fish abandoned by drift-net fishing.