Filipinos catch, eat rare shark. Only 41...well 40 left

[Liberal_in_LA]

http://www.usatoday.com/news/offbeat/2009-04-07-shark_N.htm?csp=24&RM_Exclude=Juno

Filipinos catch, eat rare shark

MANILA (AP) — Fishermen in the Philippines accidentally caught and later ate a megamouth shark, one of the rarest fishes in the world with only 40 others recorded to have been encountered, the World Wildlife Fund said Tuesday.
The 1,100-pound 13-foot megamouth died while struggling in the fishermen's net on March 30 off Burias island in the central Philippines. It was taken to nearby Donsol in Sorsogon province, where it was butchered and eaten, said Gregg Yan, spokesman for WWF-Philippines.

Yan said a WWF Donsol Project Manager Elson Aca took pictures of the megamouth and tried to dissuade the fishermen from eating it. Shark meat is the main ingredient in a local delicacy.

[Hanse]

1. That's 40 recorded encounters before. Not 40 in existence.

There's no telling what the real population is. These are deep water sharks that only come to the surface when they're sick and/or dying.

[Kittycat]

4. Hopefully it doesn't poison them.

[Liberal_in_LA]

5. true...

[ecstatic]

2. Offer alternative foods and the problem may be solved

Has the World Wildlife Fund put their money where their mouth is? :shrug:

[FudaFuda]

3. I imagined a 'megamouth' shark being a lot bigger than that. nt

[thelordofhell]

6. WWF spokesperson Randy "Macho Man" Savage says

"You megamouths are a goin' down.....Ohhhhhhh Yeeeeeaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!!!"

[MADem]

7. If the thing was already dead, what's the diff if they ate it or not?

This is the second report this year of a rare animal being caught and used for food in the Philippines. Agence-France Presse in January reported that a buttonquail, a bird species that was thought to be extinct, was photographed in the Philippines before sold at a poultry market.



This reminds me of that baaaaaaaaad movie that Marlon Brando was in...it involved a club where people ate rare animals. I barely watched it, the acting was horrific, but that premise was woven into the plot.

[northzax]

8. and wasn't it in the Philippines

that someone saw a Coelacanth in the fish market when that was thought extinct?

and the movie you are looking for is "The Freshman" with Matthew Broderick.

[mitchum]

9. "Here she is...your Komodo Dragon!"

I actually enjoyed "The Freshman"

[MADem]

11. Matthew Broderick...yes, that is the one.

Ghastly. He must have needed the money to pay the bills or something.

They found that oddball fish in Indonesia!!

Coelacanth Sightings
In the 20th century, there had been three known sightings:

the first discovery was in 1938 off the coast of Madagascar in the western Indian Ocean.
the second sighting was in 1952 at the Island of Anjouan which belongs to the Comoros Islands in the Mozambique Channel.
the third Coelacanth was identified in 1998 at North Sulawesi, Indonesia when a scientist took a picture of a Coelacanth being hauled to a fish market. This is 6,000 miles away from Africa on the opposite side of the Indian Ocean.


http://fishinsects.suite101.com/article.cfm/coelacanth_found_in_indonesia

[Canuckistanian]

10. That's a misleading headline - nobody knows whether it's rare

Nobody has a clue how many megamouth sharks there are in the world. They were only discovered in 1976 and only then by accident.

They live in the great depths, far below where humans usually fish.

There may be vast schools of them down there somewhere - we just never get to see them.