Megamouth Shark Caught, Eaten in Philippines

A megamouth shark is a very large animal. One ton (or tonne, if you will) in fact. The megamouth shark is also a very rare animal; there are only 41 known sightings.

And the most recent megamouth shark sighting occurred in the Philippines recently, when a group of fisherman caught the beast, killed it, and ate it.

Elson Aca, a Donsol WWF representative, said it was butchered and its meat sauteed in coconut milk as a local delicacy, against the organisation's device.

The 4m, half-tonne megamouth was snared by fishermen trawling for mackerel off the Bicol peninsula on Luzon island.

The species, which is named after its metre-wide mouth, is a fairly recent scientific discovery. The first specimen was caught off Oahu, Hawaii in 1976.

Now, this might sound kind of, well, obtuse, but I'm of the opinion that if you happen to catch a shark that weighs one thousand pounds and has a mouth that is three feet wide, you have every right to eat said shark, no matter what an environmental protection agency says.

Yes, that's probably a little callous as well, but the reality is that, again, the shark weighs 1,000 pounds. It's an incredibly rare and amazing catch and while sauteing the sucker might not exactly be the historically thoughtful thing to do, well, at least it justifies whatever effort these Philippians went to.