At first glance, the Mola Errata List seems pedantic. It is a catalog of mistakes on an animal that most people will never see in person. But to those who study the ocean sunfish, it is a love letter. It is an insistence that this weird, giant, parasite-ridden pancake of a fish deserves to be seen as it truly is—not as a cartoon, not as a skeleton, and not as a smiling mascot.
The next time you draw a sunfish, or even simply look at a painting of one, consult the list. Ask yourself: Where is the clavus? Is that mouth smiling? If the answer is wrong, you know where to go to make it right.
Because in the end, the Mola Errata List is not about shame. It is about accuracy. And for the Mola mola, accuracy is the highest form of respect.
The Common Error: Drawing the sunfish vertically, with its dorsal fin pointed straight up like a sail and its anal fin pointing straight down, making it look like a living kite. Why It Happens: Most museum skeletons mount the sunfish vertically because it saves space. Artists sketch the skeleton without observing a live fish. The Correction: While sunfish do swim vertically when basking or signaling, their resting swimming posture is lateral (side-to-side). More importantly, the dorsal and anal fins are symmetrical and undulate in unison. The Errata List emphasizes: The sunfish is not a sailboat. Its fins are paddles, not flags.
Game: Mola Mola (Japon Brand) Designer: Hisashi Hayashi Mola Errata List
Mola Mola is a push-your-luck game where players attempt to grow the world’s heaviest sunfish while avoiding the myriad hazards of the open ocean. While the rules are relatively simple, the unique card interactions and the distinction between "deck building" and "trash building" have led to several common points of confusion.
Below is a consolidated errata list based on official designer clarifications and frequently asked questions from the community.
This errata list addresses known corrections, omissions, and clarifications for the Mola (reverse appliqué / traditional Guna textile) instructions, patterns, or kit references. Please review these notes before beginning your project to avoid confusion and ensure accurate results.
You might ask: Does it really matter if a cartoon sunfish has a tail? At first glance, the Mola Errata List seems pedantic
According to marine biologists, yes. The Mola Errata List has become a tool for combating "taxonomic drift"—the phenomenon where public misunderstanding of an animal’s anatomy affects conservation efforts. For example, if the public believes the sunfish is a slow, vertical drifter (due to bad art), they may not support boat-speed regulations designed to protect it. In reality, Mola mola are powerful, laterally undulating swimmers.
Furthermore, the Errata List has been cited in two academic papers on Science Communication and Visual Bias (2018, 2021). It serves as a case study for how peer-review should apply not just to text, but to diagrams.
The Mola Errata List documents known errors, corrections, and clarifications for the Mola specification (or product/project named "Mola"). It helps implementers, users, and reviewers track issues, apply fixes, and understand intended behavior.
In the world of textile collecting, perfection is often the enemy of authenticity. Nowhere is this truer than with the mola—the vibrant, reverse-appliqued panels handcrafted by the Guna (formerly Kuna) women of the San Blas Islands off the coast of Panama. For decades, collectors have sought museum-quality pieces with impossibly fine stitching. However, a quiet but crucial document exists within serious collecting circles: the Mola Errata List. The Common Error: Drawing the sunfish vertically, with
This list is not a formal publication from a single source but a collective, evolving oral and written record of common manufacturing defects, pre-printed fabric errors, sewing machine glitches, and cultural missteps that define a "reject" or "second" in the mola trade. Understanding the Mola Errata List is essential for anyone buying, selling, or appraising these $50 to $5,000 textiles.
To understand the necessity of the errata list, one must understand the victim: Mola mola. This fish is a biological anomaly. It can weigh over 2,200 kilograms (2.4 tons) and yet it has no caudal fin (tail fin) in the traditional sense. Instead, it has a pseudocaudal structure called a clavus.
Because the sunfish is rarely seen alive by the average person (it spends much of its time in deep, cold water surfacing to bask), artists have historically relied on preserved specimens, poor photographs, or other artists’ work. This game of telephone led to systematic distortions.
The Mola Errata List identifies three primary categories of error: fin morphology, mouth position, and body scaling.