At first, the villagers of Barangay Namucon of Tigbauan town showed genuine concern for the giant fish when they saw it lying on their beach on Nov. 4, "heaving and suffering from what looked like a spear wound," according to World Wide Fund for Nature-Philippines. But before the animal expired, the same villagers, who earlier tried to revive it, asked Torilla if they could just hasten its slow, painful death and take the giant fish home for its meat and fins, WWW-P said. It was only on the following day that the shark-still in one piece, thanks to the BFAR official-was properly identified as a megamouth by an official of the Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center (Seafdec).

Contreras, V. (2004, November 16). Shark tales in RP: The good, the bad. Philippine Daily Inquirer, pp. A1, A22.