Freediving expert Kurt Chambers caught some amazing footage of fellow diver Katie Pentz interacting with her “spirit animal,” a huge mola mola, or ocean sunfish, off the coast of Kona, Hawaii.
“We initially thought the large fin we saw protruding through the surface might have been the tell-tale indication of the hammerhead school … But this encounter was even rarer,” Chambers wrote alongside his September 26 YouTube video showing the encounter.
Telling Storyful that the footage was taken a week prior, on September 19, he also told local media that the encounter made for “a really easy, gentle experience.” He added, “that fish is not very afraid of humans or boats and we were able to swim around with it while it meandered around.”
The director of Waikiki Aquarium, Andrew Rossiter, told Hawaii News Now that the sighting was “quite unusual.” The mola mola can weigh up to 2.5 tones and measure up to 11 feet. Chambers’s footage shows Pentz dwarfed by the heaviest of all the bony fish. Credit: Kurt Chambers via Storyful
