78 David S. Lee 



simply maneuvered out of its way. They sounded only if the boat was 

 on a collision course. Boat captains say the fish are rarely if ever hit by 

 their boats. 



Sunfish were seen on calm days, days with considerable swells, and 

 days when small white caps were prevalent, although reduced visibility 

 made comparative counts useless. When seas were quite rough (20+ 

 mph winds, high swells, and extensive white caps), no fish were found; 

 but under these conditions we occasionally sighted marine turtles, 

 sharks, and porpoises. I suspect the sunfish were then swimming deeper, 

 and our failure to see them was not simply a result of the poor subsur- 

 face visibility. 



Information pooled from 60 sightings of Mola mola personally 

 obtained and other available records from the North Carolina coast 

 suggest that the species is not randomly distributed by season or loca- 

 tion. Although field effort was not uniform, the records obtained are 

 informative, in that the majority are from areas and seasons having min- 

 imal opportunities for observation (see Table 1). 



Season: Mola mola is essentially absent off the North Carolina 

 coast during the winter (see Table 1). Although I have made few winter 

 trips (N = 20), I have no reason to assume ocean sunfish occur regularly 

 at this season, for boat captains and others also have not encountered 

 them in the winter. The earliest spring record is for 16 March, and the 

 earliest fall record is for 17 October. The species is most commonly seen 

 in the spring. Surprisingly, the fish do not occur regularly in our waters 

 during summer. Boat captains say they occasionally see ocean sunfish in 

 the summer, but some of these could be the more tropical M. lanceola- 

 ta. Interestingly, a large part of our survey time during summer was 

 spent in the Gulf Stream, where M. lanceolata could be expected, but 

 none was verified. In the summer of 1985 I personally encountered M. 

 mola eight times on only 4 of 15 offshore trips, all between 17 and 29 

 August, a period when relatively calm water usually provides optimum 

 subsurface visibility. No other summer records are available in spite of 

 rather extensive offshore surveys in this season. The fact that only three 

 M. mola were encountered in the fall (17 October through 20 November) 

 suggests a different fall migration route, or perhaps a seasonal absence 

 of surface "sunning" behavior. The three dated North Carolina records 

 provided by Brimley (1939) are all for May. Anderson and Cupka 

 (1973) also reported Mola from April (2) and May (1); but their other 

 records were from December (2), January (1), and February (2), sug- 

 gesting winter occurrence in South Carolina (see below). 



Location: This fish was seldom seen in areas of deep water (> 100 

 fathoms); most occurred in an offshore zone between 10 and 40 fathoms 

 deep (x - 28.19 fathoms). Most were seen more than 10 miles from 

 shore, although one fish was seen while the survey boat was still in sight 

 of land (19 April 1980). Only six records were in water 40 to 100 



