(AP Photo/Courtesy Ray Pacheco)

IT IS ALMOST 4 metres long, weights 600kgs (more than 94 stone) and it took a group of fishermen two and a half hours to haul it in.

However this huge Mako shark caught off the coast of California earlier this week has kicked off a debate about whether sharks of its size should be caught or released back into the wild due to the worldwide threat to the number of sharks.

The shark was brought to a tank and then a freezer at the headquarters of the New Fishall Bait Company in Gardena, California, after being caught by fishermen who were filming a deep-sea excursion for a reality show. National Geographic reports that the fishermen are applying for a world record for the biggest Mako shark to be caught; the current record was for a 554kg specimen caught off the coast of Masachusetts twelve years ago.

The expedition guide told National Geographic that it had been a difficult catch and that the shark had fought “really hard.”

Kent Williams, the weight master at the company where the shark is being stored in a freezer told the Los Angeles Times that that the shark will be “going to taxidermy and research”.

However some conservationists have expressed concern over the catching of an endangered species rather than allowing it to go back into the wild.

(All photos: AP Photo/Richard Vogel)

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