Indonesia: Sulawesi - July 2010
Dear English-speaking readers, this page is an automatic translation made from a post originally written in French. My apologies for any strange sentences and funny mistakes that may have been generated during the process. If you are reading French, click on the French flag below to access the original and correct text:
Français It's only a fish, I know. No misplaced sentimentality. Nevertheless, it is sad to see a mola-mola in agony...
The mola-mola is this big sunfish that I had met in Nusa Penidanear Bali, in 2008. This summer, near the island of Bangka, in Sulawesi, I saw one again... in less pleasant circumstances.
An unusual catch
They are fishermen from the area who came to find us, between two dives.
We were all a small group on the boat from Mimpi Indah. Indonesian side: our guide Jemi and a buddy of his, Rocky, who is also a dive guide, but who was just accompanying us that day; our captain and his deckhand.
Tourist side: four Italians on holiday; Clare, a young Scottish girl spending her dive-master and then me, the French girl who takes pictures underwater.
On the small outrigger boat approaching ours, fishermen with hookah. I spot the regulators and the small compressor. I didn't really manage to find out if they were just raising traps, nor what they usually fish, nor in what conditions...
Still, on that day, they made an unusual catch: a mola mola, !
A sick or injured moonfish
Clare can't believe it. She has never seen one. Neither have the Italians. We all open round eyes. Very excited, the guides and the captain climb on the small fishermen's boat, to see the beast more closely. And to take pictures with their cell phones!
The big fish has one glassy eye, and the other half-bloody. Sick, injured? It is still alive, but not very lively. It wiggles a little its big dorsal fin, around which the fishermen have wrapped a rope.
From the explanations I was able to obtain, it appears that the fishermen found this mola-mola on the surface. The fish was already in bad shape, they had no trouble catching it and attaching it to the hull of their boat.
They don't want to keep it, just show it to us. Besides, after chatting with our guys, they untie the ropes and release him.
The fish first floats on its side, instead of righting itself. It seems unable to swim. Then it regained some strength, sank below the surface, waved its dorsal fin, and moved away from the boat. But it struggles.
Two swimmers to the rescue
As a result, Jemi and Rocky put on their fins and mask and get into the water. They join the mola-mola and swim beside it, on both sides.
They are a bit far away. It is difficult, from the boat, to see if they are pushing or dragging it, to help it go further out to sea. After a long time, they turn around and come back to us. The captain started the engine of the boat to get them back.
Once on board, they shake their heads. Their efforts made no difference. The mola-mola was having trouble swimming. It was unlikely to survive.
The animal returned to the sea, the two "rescuers" crowd around my pictures, taken with my little backup APN that I had the good idea to take with me (my 7D was in the box for underwater pictures, with the macro lens, therefore unusable to take "normal" pictures). Everyone has their own comments. I tell about the molas-molas of Nusa Lembongan.
I don't know if the Bangka sunfish survived. I doubt it, given its condition. It seemed to me to be in a rather agonizing state. But who knows? Nature can be amazingly resourceful.
The mola-mola dance
Small addition below, to console the saddest: the video of the mola-mola, alive and well this one, crossed in the waters of Nusa Penida, near Bali, in 2008 (and I then timidly performing the famous dance mola-mola, underwater choreography very popular at World Diving, excellent dive-shop on Nusa Lembongan) ...
😂
