First Record of an Adult Sharptail Mola in Massachusetts and Notes on Ocean Sunfish Strandings.

Carson, Carol D. “Krill”¹, Katherine E. Bemis², Karsten Hartel³, Andrew Williston³, ¹New England Coastal Wildlife Alliance, Middleboro, MA, ²NOAA National Systematics Laboratory, Washington, D.C., ³Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard, MA

Masturus lanceolatus (Sharptail Mola) is a species of Molidae found circumglobally in tropical and temperate seas. The Sharptail Mola is poorly known, and most adult records from western North Atlantic occurrences are based on stranded individuals on beaches from North Carolina, Florida, and along the Gulf of Mexico. We describe a specimen from Cape Cod Bay that is the northernmost record of an adult Sharptail Mola in the western North Atlantic; only 1 other record from Massachusetts is known: a juvenile specimen collected in the late 1800s. On 11 October 2020, an adult Sharptail Mola was found stranded dead on Mayo Beach, Wellfleet, MA. The New England Coastal Wildlife Alliance (NECWA) documented the carcass (TL = 98.5 cm, PCL = 81.6 cm, female) while responding to strandings of Mola mola (Ocean Sunfish) in this same location. Wellfleet Harbor is a hot spot for strandings and 53 of 124 (42.7%) ocean sunfishes that stranded in Massachusetts in 2020 occurred in this location. Each fall, individuals navigating out of Cape Cod Bay are funneled into Wellfleet Harbor, whose inner harbor is difficult to navigate. Strandings of Sharptail Mola in Cape Cod Bay are rare in comparison to strandings of Ocean Sunfish, with only 1 Sharptail Mola recorded in comparison to 124 Ocean Sunfish in 2020. The presence of this specimen in Wellfleet may be an isolated event or could indicate a recent range extension in the western North Atlantic Ocean in response to the warming waters of the Gulf of Maine.