Is the Ocean Sunfish Responsible for Sinking a 16-Metre Yacht Near Tasmania?

In defence of the ocean sunfish?

It's referred to as a giant, floating "dinner plate", the most useless fish in the sea and a mistake by Mother Nature, but the ocean sunfish may be the reason a 16-metre yacht sunk near a Tasmanian island. 

Sailor Michael Spies told Channel Seven that the yacht, Hollywood Boulevard, was heading back to Sydney after placing 10th in Boxing Day's Sydney to Hobart race when it struck a huge fish. All six sailors had to abandon ship and were flown to hospitals via rescue helicopters. 

A dramatic story with the culprit being none other than the pretty harmless ocean sunfish (a.k.a. Mola mola).

You may remember some time ago last year (which is like centuries in meme timelines), some opinionated Facebook user wrote a rant about how useless the ocean sunfish is. 

He explained that they can barely move through the water due to their fins de-evolving, they can't stop swimming because they don't have a swim bladder (a thing every fish should have) and they only manage to eat jellyfish, which provide them with very little nutrients.

Despite this, they regularly live for more than a decade. A truly fascinating anomaly in evolution.

He concluded that the fish was a complete failure of evolution and signed off with a picture of a sunfish swimming, blissfully unaware that a seal is taking a giant chunk out of it.

While he did have some hilariously true points, he probably didn't envisage the sunfish, which can grow up to three metres and weigh around a tonne, being the culprit for sinking a 16-metre yacht.

So, sea monsters are real, you may be thinking. Despite the fact that this one-tonne mess of a fish may have single-handedly brought down a huge yacht, it was almost 100 per cent an accident. It wasn't having a bad day and decided to take it out on a yacht. No, instead, it was likely floating along the surface (due to lacking that swim bladder) and having a ball of a time when the yacht ran into it.

Let's spare a thought for the poor sunfish that probably made it through a decade of life (by being the fish that no one paid attention to) who finally met its end while sunbathing in the Bass Strait. A true tragedy, if you ask me.

Photo: iStock.com/senerdesign