Yet it is an animal we know very little about.
Taiwanese scientists prepare to attach a tag to a mola .
A marine biologist with the California-based Sea Studios Foundation, Thys and her team including Heidi Dewar, Steve Karl, Anna Bass, and Todd Streelman, are on a mission to discover the secrets of the Mola mola. Found in all tropical and temperate oceans, the Mola mola, or giant ocean sunfish, eats mainly jellyfish. If it lives to adulthood, a mola can gain over 60 million times its starting weight, says Thys. The R.M.S. Titanic was the largest moving object ever built before it sank on its maiden voyage in 1912. In a project supported by the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration, Monterey Bay Aquarium, the Lindbergh Foundation, and the Taiwan Fisheries Research Institute, Thys and her team are tracking molas using satellite tags.