A weird 7-foot fish with a face "only a mother could love" washed ashore in Oregon – and it's rarer than experts thought

An "unusual" and "strange looking fish" washed up onto an Oregon coast earlier this month, shocking people with its gargantuan size. At first, experts thought it was just a "run of the mill ocean sunfish," known by the scientific name Mola mola, but now, they've learned it's something else — and rare. 

The Seaside Aquarium said in a Facebook post last week that the after photos of the massive 7.3-foot fish caused "quite a stir on social media," New Zealand researcher Mariann Nyegaard believed it was a species that isn't familiar to Oregon, but that she extensive experience with. The fish turned out to be a hoodwinker sunfish, which she "discovered and described" in research published in 2017.

Hoodwinkers were discovered "hiding in plain sight" in museum collections after 125 years of specimens being misidentified, according to the Australian Museum. Describing sunfish as "beautiful giants," the museum says that the world's largest bony fish can grow to be more than 4,400 pounds.