Last week a terrifying frill shark was discovered on the coast of Australia, this week another bizarre species of shark was discovered in the Philippines.
A rare megamouth shark was spotted washed up on shore this past Wednesday. Locals were confused and slightly scared because they were unable to recognize this creature, which shares little resemblance to a shark.
This particular species has similar qualities of normal species of shark, having the same length and girth that one envisions a shark to look like, but its body is more cylindrical and it’s face resembles that of an eel, but with an enormous mouth.
There have been only 60 collected accounts of megamouth sharks, according to marine ecologist Christopher Bird. The first one was documented back in 1976, when a 16-foot megamouth shark attached itself to a sea anchor off of Hawaii.
Bird stated in his blog that 85 percent of the documented sightings were found in the Pacific Ocean, most prominently in he western North Pacific around the countries of the Philippines, Japan, and Taiwan.
Bird writes in his blog, “We still do not know where a large proportion of these sharks spend their time. Are they in deeper waters or maybe in oceanic, non-fishing grounds? We still don’t know and have no idea!”
This particular specimen came in at 15 feet long, and it has been stated that there have only been extremely large or extremely small specimens discovered, there have not been any medium sized encounters.
Although Bird is highly fascinated by this unique looking creature he goes on to say, “Maybe not knowing about this animal is a good thing,” Bird writes. “It prevents information on its distribution getting into the hands of those who would happily exploit this creature for some large fish steaks or megamouth burgers.”
