The widemouth shark (Megachasma pelagios ) is a rare species of shark discovered in 1976 characterized by filter feeding, hence it swims with its mouth open in a similar way to how whale sharks do to get food. Their appearance is quite peculiar and the females are usually much larger than the males, with adult specimens weighing more than a thousand kilos.
A peculiar sighting
David Stabile, Val Costescu and Andrew Chang were fishing aboard the Hynautical about 30 miles off the coast of San Diego when they spotted these widemouth sharks. They took the opportunity to record one of the most elusive sharks on the planet on video and uploaded their captures to social networks.
In the videos you can see the sharks swimming slowly very close to the boat. One swims closer to the surface, while the other can be seen a foot below him, moving almost in the other’s shadow. It is probably a pair of wide mouth sharks.
According to experts, it has been quite an event that they were located and immortalized, since it is very rare to see them during the day, since they spend most of their time in deep waters, quite far from the coast.
The young people surprised by their discovery commented that the sharks seemed to be curious about the boat, as they were inspecting it for about 10 minutes before, very slowly, swimming away out to sea .
The first widemouth shark was caught on November 15, 1976 , about 25 miles northeast of Kahuku, Hawaii, when it became entangled in the sea anchor of a US Navy ship.
