A rare Megamouth shark was caught off the coast of Japan recently, marking the 58th time in history one of its kind were seen or caught by man, Japanese news outlets reported.
Getting a public reception of more than 1,500 onlookers in the Japanese city of Shizuoka, the shark was hauled from a depth close to 2,600 feet below sea, UK MailOnline reported.
Scientists performed an autopsy on the 1,500-pound female shark in front of onlookers at the Marine Science Museum on Thursday, The Japan Daily Press reported.
However, it hasn't been made clear on when the shark was nabbed.
First discovered in 1976, the first megamouth prompted scientists to create an entirely new family and genus of sharks, the Associated Press reported.
"The megamouths are docile filter-feeders with wide, blubbery mouths," Fox News reported. "Others megamouths - considered one of the rarest fish in the world - have been encountered in California, Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia, Brazil, Ecuador, Senegal, South Africa, Mexico and Australia. It's known to inhabit the Indian, Pacific and Atlantic oceans, according to the Florida Museum of Natural History."
"As with the two other filter-feeding sharks, the basking and whale sharks, this species is wide-ranging," according to a profile of the animal on the museum's website. "However, the megamouth is considered to be less active and a poorer swimmer than the basking or whale sharks."
With a maximum size of megamouth being at least 17 feet long, the shark is known to primarily feed on large quantities of krill. The only known predator of a megamouth is known to be the sperm whale, researchers said.
A 1,100-pound, 13-foot megamouth was caught by fisherman in the Philippines in 2009. After accidently catching it in their net off Burias island in the central Philippines, the megamouth shark struggled and died. It was taken to a nearby Donsol on Sorsogon province later, where it was butchered and eaten, the AP reported.
