Warted John Dory: This Fish Spat on Environmental Laws and Now Lives Up to 140 Years (8 photos)

On average, large animals live longer than small ones on the planet. After all, they need more time, resources and energy to grow up. But the bumpy sunfish breaks all the rules. This miracle lives in tropical waters, weighs 2 kilograms and lives for 140 years. Why? Because it can! This is a punk fish that doesn't give a damn about environmental laws.





The first 30 years of childhood are the hardest for men. The sunfish confirms this!

She doesn't care so much that she doesn't even bother with her body shape. The humpbacked sunfish is an active predatory fish. It attacks shrimp, cephalopods and small fish. All normal active predators make their bodies as streamlined and ergonomic as possible. And our nephor is a diamond-shaped pancake with fins. How it manages to hunt with such physical characteristics is a mystery. And in general, its life is a secret, covered in deep-sea darkness. Only one thing is known for sure: like any normal punks, sunfish slowly sink to the bottom as they live. And their life is very long, so they can sink deep.



It looks like someone has attached a strange head to a strange body.

The eggs and fry bask in the sun's rays at the very surface of the ocean, at depths of up to 200 meters. There is a lot of plankton there, among which the eggs hide, and the young fish feed. When the John Dory becomes a teenager, it goes to a depth of up to 1000 meters. Here it will spend the next 25-30 years until it becomes sexually mature. There is no need to hurry: even after reaching maturity, the fish still has 100-110 years to live! Adult, experienced scaly creatures gather in groups near underwater craters and hills at depths of up to 1,300 meters.





Not a baby anymore, but it still takes about 15 years to grow to adulthood.

Most fish and invertebrates from these depths spend their lives in endless vertical migration. At night they rise to the rich waters of the surface, and during the day they hide in the darkness again from large predators. But not the sunfish. They won't set foot on their level. They've even grown huge eyes to see in almost complete darkness. That is why very little is known about them, even catching a fish is not a trivial task.

How then did they find out their age? By otoliths. Otoliths, or auditory pebbles, are an organ that is responsible for balance and orientation in space in all vertebrates. With its help, fish (and not only) are able to sense gravity, buoyancy of the body and where it is moving. For ichthyologists, the otolith of fish is extremely useful. It stores information about the age and maturity of gill-breathing animals.



Otoliths of Pacific cod.

Annual rings form on the auditory pebbles, like on trees. The principle works in exactly the same way: in the season when the fish is actively growing, the rings become lighter. In the season when there is not enough food, the rings become dark. The change of well-fed and hungry seasons helps to calculate the age of the fish.



Mom, why are you swearing? Yes, I'm 35, I don't have a wife or an apartment. But my whole life is still ahead of me!

To determine the age of the heliozoans, scientists took otoliths from 235 fish. And they found that by the age of 7, the heliozoan does not even become sexually mature! The species reaches adulthood only by the age of 30-35! Based on the data obtained, ichthyologists built a model and obtained the maximum age of the fish - 130 years.



Since the sunfish is a rare catch, footage of them is truly unique. And physically they can only be found in university collections.

Why is the sunfish so hard to find? Because people do not even know the exact boundaries of its habitat. The vast majority of fish are caught off the coast of South America, South Africa and Australia. Their fry and eggs are also found there. But in 2010, a fishing trawler suddenly caught a sunfish off the coast of Canada, about 8,000 kilometers to the north!



Almost all the photos of live fish for the article are frames from the video. The only one where the species was captured on camera!



Moreover, most ichthyologists have only seen this fish in this format.

And you know what's the coolest thing? Their tactics work. These cheeky little fish confuse people, which saves their lives. After all, bumpy sunfish are edible fish with a unique taste, and people would definitely be interested in them. But their industrial catch is impossible, because we do not understand their lifestyle and have no idea where to catch them. We can't even roughly estimate the number of sea punks!

And they are happy. They live, reproduce, and do not die out.