Narrator: This is Science Today. Scientists studying the fish collection at the University of California, San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography have a saying: so many fish, so little time. H.J. Walker, a senior museum scientist, says technology has helped scientists connect with other fish collections around the world.

Walker: It's like book libraries that connect. We actually can search each other's collections now over the Internet, which is fantastic to find out which specimens we have as far as various species. Technology has really helped us as far as getting information out.

Narrator: Recently, Walker and his colleagues have been studying the megamouth shark – a rare, gentle giant that feeds on plankton and, as the name implies, has a huge mouth. The first megamouth shark ever discovered was found near Hawaii in the mid-1970s.

Walker: It's so incredible so many things in the ocean that we still haven't figured out. We're very much into finding out when we have a new species, how these relate to species that have already been described. And how these related species work up the hierarchy, say for example, what families constitute an order and ultimately, the class of vertebrates.

Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.