The Megamouth Shark

The slow swimming, megamouth shark is one of the most rare sharks. Since the megamouth shark was discovered, only 54 megamouth`s have been found. Two of the megamouth`s cousins are the basking shark and the whale shark. The megamouth is not like other sharks. It is flabby and it has loose skin and a oddly shaped huge mouth. Megamouth shark like its cousins is a filter feeder. That is why it has such a huge mouth. Most megamouths were caught in fishing nets. One day, on November 15th of November, 1976, a U.S ship was cruising off the coast of one of the islands of Hawaii and found that it`s sea anchor (a sea anchor is an anchor that drags along the ocean when the ship is moving) had picked up something huge. When they pulled up the anchor they found that  a big dead fish had got snagged on their anchor. They didn`t know what kind of fish it was so they took it to the Waikiki aquarium. The scientists there said it was a kind of shark but they didn't know what kind it was. It was named after it`s big mouth. The shark about 14.7 feet long and it was around 1,650 pounds.