Great white shark captured on camera for the first time in Mediterranean waters, in footage released for World Oceans Day
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A great white shark has been recorded swimming in the Mediterranean for the first time – a rare moment captured on camera by a diver offshore between Tunisia and Sicily.
The adult male shark was seen when a diving team were recovering abandoned fishing nets – known as ‘ghost’ nets – from a shipwreck in the depths of the Strait of Sicily, part of efforts in a collaborative project between the Healthy Seas Foundation, Ghost Diving and SDSS (The Society for Documentation of Submerged Sites).
This area is known to be one of the most heavily fished parts of the Mediterranean. Previously, there had been only occasional surface sightings of what were thought to be great white sharks in the region.
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Footage of the great white was captured by volunteer Derk Remmers and released to mark World Oceans Day on 8 June.
‘Statistically, it is way more likely to win the lotto jackpot than to meet such an iconic animal underwater,’ said Remmers. ‘You spend decades diving wrecks and removing ghost-nets, but nothing prepares you for a moment like this.’
‘An offshore underwater shark encounter in the Mediterranean is insane, yet we also went on with our diving plan to remove nets from the wreck, as this moment showed the importance of our work very clearly.’
Marine experts have described the encounter as both ‘scientifically valuable’ and ‘highly unusual’, and said further analysis must be undertaken before conclusions can be drawn.
‘Observations like this are extremely valuable for improving our understanding of the distribution, habits and behaviour of this critically endangered species, whose survival is threatened by human activities,’ said researcher at the Sicily Marine Centre of the Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Dr Carlo Cattano.
‘Our research on sharks has, over time, allowed us to identify several key hotspots for threatened species, and this sighting is particularly significant in validating the conservation value of this area.’
Great white sharks are the world’s largest known predatory fish. They are typically found in Australia and South Africa, but are known to frequent temperate and tropical coastal waters across the planet.
According to the IUCN, great whites are officially designated as Vulnerable, with the species regularly being caught as bycatch by the fishing industry, and still threatened by specific shark culls and hunts.
