Fishers caught a rare megamouth shark off the coast of Hualien on Monday, the Coast Guard Administration said.
The 3.5m, 612kg shark was already dead when the fishers pulled it from the sea, the coast guard said, quoting the fishing boat’s owner.
In accordance with a mandatory catch-and-report measure implemented by the Fisheries Agency in 2013, the catch was reported to the agency and a team of experts at National Taiwan Ocean University, it said.
The experts took tissue samples from the shark at the Port of Hualien before it was processed and sold, it added.
The Chinese-language Apple Daily reported that the shark was sold to a restaurant in Yilan County for NT$61,200.
The megamouth shark is a filter-feeder that swims with its mouth open, filtering water for tiny plankton and jellyfish.
The species is rarely seen and fewer than 100 specimens have been observed or caught since it was first reported in 1976, according to research published last year in the biological journal PeerJ.
Megamouth sharks are most frequently seen along the Kuroshio Current, spanning Taiwan, Japan and the Philippines, the study said.
Despite being rarely seen, megamouth sharks are not recognized as a protected species in Taiwan and commercial fishing of the species is allowed.
Liu Shang-yin (劉商隱), one of the researchers in the study, said that the government should better protect large and rare fish species such as the megamouth shark.
The environmental group Kuroshio Ocean Education Foundation said that the catch-and-report measure is only a nominal rule, adding that the government should ban the commercial fishing of megamouth sharks.
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