Fishermen Encounter Elusive Megamouth Sharks Off California Coast

A man who recently went fishing with friends off the coast of San Diego captured footage of the deep-water-dwelling megamouth shark, one of the most rarely seen of shark species.

“This weekend my friends and I went fishing off the coast of San Diego and video taped two of the most elusive sharks on this planet,” David Stabile said on Twitter on September 16.

Stabile told Storyful that the megamouth shark was “rarely ever observed in the wild” and “only seen alive in the United States around six times.”

The fish was only discovered in 1976, and been sighted a confirmed 273 times since then.

“In most cases they are caught in fishing nets or washed up dead ashore, not filmed live in their environment,” Stabile said.

Quoting Dovi Kacev, a researcher with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, NBC said the megamouth shark was rarely seen because it spends most of its time in deep water, far off shore.

“There’s still a lot of unknown about them as far as where they spend their time because we see them so infrequently,” Kacev said. Credit: David Stabile via Storyful

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