Record of a rare Sharp-tail sunfish, Masturus lanceolatus Liénard, 1840 (Tetraodontiformes: Molidae) landing from South-west coast of India

Nair, Rekha J and Sijo Paul and Dinesh Kumar, S (2013) Record of a rare Sharp-tail sunfish, Masturus lanceolatus Liénard, 1840 (Tetraodontiformes: Molidae) landing from South-west coast of India. Marine Fisheries Information Service; Technical & Extension Series (218). p. 7.

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Abstract

The family Molidae comprises epipelagic fish commonly known as molas or ocean sunfish, which are distributed in warm, tropical waters in all the oceans (Matsuura, 2002). Among the sunfishes described, Masturus lanceolatus is considered rare on the Indian coast. Four species described in this family are:Ranzania laevis (Pennant 1776), Mola mola (Linnaeus 1758), Masturus lanceolatus (Liénard 1840) and Mola ramsayi (Giglioli 1883), which is restricted to the southern hemisphere (Parenti 2003; Bass et al., 2005). M. lanceolatus, commonly known as the sharptail mola, has broad distribution in the western Atlantic, occurring from Nova Scotia to south-eastern Brazil.

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