What is a Megamouth Shark?
The Megamouth shark is an extremely rare species of deepwater shark. Only 39 specimens have been sighted, and just three caught on film. The discovery of the Megamouth shark in 1979, when it became caught on a sea anchor of a US Navy ship off the coast of Hawaii, is often hailed as one of the greatest zoological discoveries of the century. Of well-known species, the Megamouth is most closely related to the Basking Shark. The first Megamouth shark specimen hauled up from the deep measured 14.6 ft (4.46 m) and weighed 1,650 lbs (750 kg). Since then, larger specimens have been found, ranging up to 5.5 m (18 ft) in length and weighing up to 2,679 lb (1,215 kg). As its name suggests, the Megamouth shark has a huge mouth, which it uses to filter the water for organic bits. The Megamouth shark has anatomical features so different than other sharks, it was assigned its own family, Megachasmidae. The Megamouth shark is not the only filter feeding shark — the basking shark and whale shark also e
A megamouth shark is a member of the same order of sharks that includes white sharks, basking sharks and mako sharks. It’s in its own family and its own genus as a single species (Megachasma pelagios), and it’s in the Megachasmidae family. It’s one of a kind, or monotypic, as we say in the scientific world. It’s the only member of its group, the only member of its family, and the only member of its genus. It was not discovered until 1976 in Hawaii. The specimen had gotten tangled up in what’s called a sea anchor, which is basically a parachute that’s put behind a boat on the open sea to keep the boat from drifting too fast. This is a species that basically eats small shrimpthe little krill in the water. It probably spends most of its time in at mid-depth but does come to the surface, mostly to chase the large masses of krill as they go up and down in the water column during their natural, daily migrations. It’s pretty amazing that this animal, which gets reasonably large, was not disco
Spacer Back IMAGE 1 of 2 Next On the morning of March 30, fishermen casting their nets in the Burias Pass, a centrally located channel in the Philippine archipelago, got the catch—not to mention surprise—of their lives: a megamouth shark so rare that some people still consider it a ” cryptid “, a creature that is seen so infrequently science can’t confirm its existence. That’s likely an overstatement when it comes to the megamouth, first spotted in 1976 in waters near the Hawaiian island of Oahu. But, according to the Florida Museum of Natural History (FLMNH) in Gainesville, which dubbed last month’s catch “megamouth 41” (this being only the 41st observation of one of these sharks)—this is the eighth specimen snagged in the Pacific Ocean near the Philippines. The docile leviathan, measuring 13 feet (four meters) in length and weighing in at about 1,100 pounds (500 kilograms), died after becoming entangled in the nets. The anglers brought it back to the municipality of Donsol where, ove
