Sunfish has disappeared for 3 years and then appeared on the other end of the Atlantic

Sun shark, mounted tracking device but has lost track, suddenly reappeared after 3 years.

The appearance of the sharks exposed to the sun marked the second time the species swam across the Atlantic, according to a study by Queen's University Belfast and Western University published in the journal Fish Biology in October.

Sunfish is considered one of the most bizarre fish in the ocean, with its huge size and so its transatlantic adventure attracted more attention.

It was fitted with a tracking device in August 2014 at Malin Head, Ireland's northernmost point and is considered the gathering place of sunfishes in the Northeast Atlantic. However, after a few months, the device stopped transmitting data, according to CNN.

'It's not strange, ' says Jonathan Houghton, one of the principal researchers at Queen's University Belfast. 'If you install electronics under the sea, accept that it could go down after a while.'

Sunfish are eating plankton off Land's End, Cornwall, UK.(Photo: CNN).

The shark was then exposed to the sun by a photographer in the ocean more than 4,600km away, off the coast of North America, in June 2017.

The photo went around Europe and reached the research team. That's when they found the amazing thing: 'This is the shark they installed the device three years ago.'

"Until then, we had not been able to track the movements of a shark for more than nine months or a year. So a sunfish moving for up to three years on the other side of the Atlantic. Duong has completely changed our way of thinking, ' said Mr. Houghton.

Sun sharks are of interest to scientists because their numbers are declining. It is the 'endangered' species in the Northeast Atlantic and North Pacific and 'vulnerable' around the world, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)

With a length of up to 12m, this is the second largest fish in existence.

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