MANILA, Philippines — 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 (500-kilogram) 13-foot (4-meter) 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.

The first megamouth was discovered in Hawaii in 1976, prompting scientists to create an entirely new family and genus of sharks. The megamouths are docile filter-feeders with wide, blubbery mouths. Yan said the Burias megamouth’s stomach revealed it was feeding on shrimp larvae.

Yan said the fish was tagged “Megamouth 41″ _ the 41st megamouth recorded in the world _ by the Florida Museum of Natural History. It was the eighth reported encountered in Philippine seas.

He said the megamouth was caught in 660-foot (200-meter) deep waters, which are also frequented by the endangered whale shark, the world’s largest fish and also a filter-feeder in the Donsol area, about 185 miles (300 kilometers) southeast of Manila.

Aca said the presence of two of the world’s three filter-feeding sharks along with manta rays and dolphins indicates that the region’s marine ecosystem was still relatively healthy and should continue to be protected.

Yan urged fishermen who encounter the rare shark to immediately report to authorities or the WWF.

Others megamouths have been encountered in California, Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia, Brazil, Ecuador, Senegal, South Africa, Mexico and Australia.

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Originally posted 2009-04-07 12:03:03.

Popularity: 25% [?]

LONDON (AFP) – British animal rights activists staged a topless protest on Thursday against what they called the “naked cruelty” involved in creating foie gras.

The protest by supporters of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) took place on London’s Oxford Street opposite upmarket department store Selfridges, urging them to stop stocking it.

The activists waved heart-shaped signs featuring the slogan “Have a heart — drop foie gras”.

PETA wants Selfridges to follow the lead of other British retailers which have stopped stocking foie gras, which means “fatty liver” and is created by force-feeding ducks.

A spokeswoman for Selfridges said it sold both foie gras and a “welfare-friendly” version, adding: “If customers continue to buy any product then we will continue to have it there for them.”

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Originally posted 2009-02-15 08:53:40.

Popularity: 1% [?]

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. – A man who’s renovating a 120-year-old house has discovered a hidden room in its basement — a find he said shows that some old buildings definitely hold secrets. A friend of Carl Thoms was working recently on plumbing in the 1890 home’s basement when he noticed that he could see around those pipes into a hidden room covered in tiles.

He also spotted a staircase — a discovery that led Thoms to a bedroom off of the home’s kitchen, where he pried up some floorboards and accessed those stairs.

At the bottom of the stairs, Thoms found himself in a walled-off 10-foot-square room covered in tiles that at first made him think the room might have once been a tiled sauna.

But he also wonders whether it might have been a bootlegging room during Prohibition — or any number of possibilities.

“You never know what it could have been,” Thoms said. “It’s really cool to find something like that.”

He said the room appears to have been intentionally walled off from the rest of the basement but that it’s difficult to date the blocks used to wall it up because they appear old. The stairs may have once been accessed through the bedroom via a trap door that no longer exists.

Thoms began renovating the 886-square-foot house near the city’s downtown for him, his wife and their four children after buying it in 2007.

The 32-year-old said he plans to do some library research his old home’s history.

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Originally posted 2009-02-18 08:59:15.

Popularity: 2% [?]