Two EXTREMELY rare megamouth sharks captured on video off the coast of San Diego by fishermen

Two extremely rare megamouth sharks were captured on video off the coast of San Diego. David Stabile was fishing with his friends Val Costescu and Andrew Chang about 30 miles offshore when they saw the megamouth sharks. ’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. Here’s some cool footage I took of the two Megamouth Sharks,’ Stabile wrote on Twitter. In the videos, which were shared on Twitter and Facebook, the sharks can be seen slowly swimming very close to the boat. One swims closer to the surface while the other can be seen a feet below it, moving almost in the other’s shadow. Megamouth, known formally as megachasma pelagios, is a species of deepwater shark that was discovered in 1976 and is rarely observed by humans. ’This may be a mating pair: the second video shows a male (clasper clearly visible) with a damaged left pectoral fin; the first video is of a scarred shark that may be a female (no visible claspers),’ Alison Schulman-Janiger, a research associate at Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, explained in a Facebook post that shared the videos. ’WOWZA!’ Megamouth sharks can grow up to 18 feet long and are usually found at depths of 3,000 to 15,000 feet. The first megamouth shark was captured on November 15, 1976, about 25 miles northeast of Kahuku, Hawaii, when it became entangled in the sea anchor of a U.S. Navy ship. According to Schulman-Janiger, the second megamouth shark was captured off of Santa Catalina Island and is displayed at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. ’It is extremely unusual to see them during the day,’ she said.