Many people assume there’s not much living in the waters off the coast of England, but the ocean is full of surprising marine life, even in the UK.
You never know what you might see in our waters, something brought to life in a recent video shared by a boat skipper who came across two sunfish in the shipping lanes off the coast of Sussex.
“I was out drifting for bass and bream on a wreck this weekend when I spotted two sunfish right off Sussex, out in the shipping lanes,” says Kurt Lander, skipper of the charter boat Yellowfin in Brighton.
Sunfish are, arguably, the weirdest-looking fish on the planet. These large fish are round and flat like a pancake with a pair of fins that flap above the water when they swim at the surface.
The two sunfish were flopping around in the water, lying on their side right at the surface surrounded by seabirds.
The birds have been lured in by the chance of a snack – but they’re not about to feast on the sunfish. “They’re waiting for the birds to peck the parasites off them,” Lander explains in the video.
Seeing these two bizarre creatures just five feet from his boat was a “proper privilege,” he says. “An amazing thing to see out there.”
Image and video credit: Kurt Lander, Skipper, Yellowfin
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