A shark named ``megamouth'' with lips that glow in the dark washed ashore off the coast of Western Australia, and scientists said it was only the third time such a specimen has been found. ``In this day and age, it is quite a remarkable find,'' Dr. Gerald Allen of the Fish Department of the Western Australia Museum said Friday. ``Something like this doesn't happen every day.'' The fish, which measured 16 feet and looks like a cross between a whale and a shark, swam ashore on Wednesday near the resort town of Mandurah. Locals pushed it back to sea, but it beached itself again and died. Allen said only two other specimens had been found. He said a megamouth _ as researchers call the shark _ was first discovered in 1976 off Hawaii. A second specimen was caught in 1984 off the coast of Southern California. ``It's the first time a megamouth has been found in the Southern Hemisphere,'' Allen said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. Allen said the fish lives at depths of 660 feet to 3,300 feet and has bioluminescent lips that glow in the dark to attract jellyfish, plankton, shrimp and other food. ``We don't know very much about it other than that it swims at great depths apparently with its mouth open, filtering food,'' said Allen. He said the megamouth has a bulbous head with a mouth measuring 2{ feet across and tiny teeth. ``It's definitely a shark and it is not prehistoric,'' Allen said. Allen also noted that the megamouth, weighing about 1,500 pounds, feels very flabby. ``It's sort of like jelly,'' he said. ``That is because it doesn't need strong muscles or a hard skeleton for the sort of environment in which it lives.'' He said the museum planned to display the megamouth.
