Record 2-tonne sunfish found off the coast of Ceuta

Madrid: Marine biologist Enrique Ostale could not believe his eyes when he saw the enormous sunfish tangled in the nets of a tuna-fishing boat off the Mediterranean coast of Ceuta earlier this month.

The mammoth sunfish, a species classed as vulnerable and not eaten in Europe, was 3.2 metres (10.5 feet) long, 2.9 metres (9.5 feet) wide, Enrique Ostale said in an interview on Thursday. The find, which he was called to assess, was a record for the area which, due to tides and sunfish migratory patterns, has no shortage of such encounters.

"We tried to put it on the 1,000-kg (2,204.6-lb) scale but it was too heavy. It would've broken it," said Ostale, who heads Seville University's Marine Biology Lab in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta on the north coast of Africa.