What Paddleboarders Encountered Will Delightfully Freak You Out

Paddleboarders off Laguna Beach, California, witnessed an unexpected treat on a recent outing: a massive sunfish basking at the ocean surface. (Check out the images below.)

“This was the biggest one I’ve seen,” one of the men, Rich German, told HuffPost on Tuesday.

German and Matt Wheaton marveled at the bizarre-looking sea critter in photos and videos that German, founder of the ocean-preservation nonprofit Project O, shared on Instagram earlier this month.

“We didn’t have a measuring tape but Matt’s board is 14 foot long and the fish sure looked like a sold 9 ft+,” he wrote.

“Always fun to witness one of these interesting creatures. Holy mola mola!” German added, a reference to the sunfish’s scientific name.

Credit: Rich German, Founder of Project O and host of Our Epic Ocean podcast

The mola mola looks like half a fish, or a “mutilated shark alien,” as German told USA Today.

Sunfish “are the heaviest of all the bony fish, with large specimens reaching 14 feet vertically and 10 feet horizontally and weighing nearly 5,000 pounds. Sharks and rays can be heavier, but they’re cartilaginous fish,” National Geographic reported.

The gentle giant, which has a relatively tiny mouth, prefers jellyfish to eat, according to National Geographic.

German wrote in his Instagram caption that he might have witnessed a record-setting sunfish for size.

In October, a sunfish measuring 10.5 feet long and 9.5 feet wide was caught off the coast of north Africa.