Tierney Thys swims with the giant sunfish

And sunfish is one of the words for basking sharks.

But more commonly all around the island, they were known as the sunfish.

And that predator is the giant ocean sunfish, the Mola mola, whose primary prey are jellyfish.

Now this is typically how you see sunfish, this is where they get their common name.

I set up a website because I was getting so many questions about Molas and sunfish.

In fact, the streetlights in 1742 of Galway, Dublin and Waterford were linked with sunfish oil.

And I think it's kind of a nice little cosmological convergence here that the Mola mola its common name is sunfish that its favorite food is the moon jelly.

You know, you look at sharks, and they're streamlined, and they're sleek, and you look at tuna, and they're like torpedoes they just give away their agenda. They're about migration and strength, and then you look at the sunfish.

Marine biologist Tierney Thys asks us to step into the water to visit the world of the i Mola mola i , or giant ocean sunfish. Basking, eating jellyfish and getting massages, this behemoth offers clues to life in the open sea.

They were also very important to coast communities going back hundreds of years, especially the around the Claddagh, Duff, Connemara region where subsistence farmers used to sail out on their hookers and open boats sometimes way off shore, sometimes to a place called the Sunfish Bank, which is about 30 miles west of Achill Island, to kill the basking sharks.