The megamouth shark is so rare that it manage to stay undiscovered
until one was found tangled in the parachute anchors of a ship
in 1976, off the coast of the Hawaiian Islands.
Only around 60 specimens have been found since then.
Most of these specimens were found washed up on beaches.
It wasn't even until 1992 that the first live specimen was found.
The megamouth can reach around 16.5 ft (5 m) in length.
It has a large flabby body, a rounded snout,
and large gill openings.
These sharks are found in the warm temperate and tropical areas of the ocean.
This map shows areas where these sharks have been spotted around the world.
They have been observed from depths of 39 to over 660 ft deep (12 to 201 m).
Megamouth sharks are one of the three known species of filter feeding sharks.
There jaws are covered with small, hook-like teeth.
They swim slowly and mainly consume plankton like copepods,
jellyfish, and shrimp.
Bristle-like gill rakers are used to trap the plankton, while the remaining water
filters through the mouth and gills.
They are vertical migraters that spend the day deeper in the ocean
and swim closer to the surface at night.
This migration pattern is the same pattern as the shrimp that it consumes.
These sharks are threatened to become endangered soon because of being
unintentionally caught in fishing nets.
Because they are so rare and their abundance is hard to estimate,
losing just a few individuals may impact their future populations.
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