What is believed to be the first underwater footage of a great white shark in the Mediterranean Sea has been captured by divers during a ghost net removal mission organised by the Healthy Seas Foundation.
The encounter occurred while a team of technical divers from Ghost Diving, coordinating with Healthy Seas and the Society for the Documentation of Submerged Sites (SDSS) were working to remove abandoned fishing nets from a shipwreck offshore in the Strait of Sicily.
The footage and photographs of the great white shark were captured underwater by Ghost Diving 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.’
Healthy Seas said that while the shark encounter was ‘extraordinary’, the mission during which it happened was focused on a more urgent problem: the removal of ghost nets entangled on the wreck and surrounding seabed.
The location, which is being kept secret, was described by the organisation as ‘key biodiversity hotspot that is also one of the most heavily exploited fishing areas in the Mediterranean.’
Previous dives at the site documented marine animals trapped in abandoned fishing gear, including several endangered loggerhead sea turtles and large fish species.
‘What makes this encounter so powerful is not only the shark itself, but the context in which it happened,’ said Veronika Mikos, Director of Healthy Seas.
‘We were there to remove ghost nets trapping marine life on a shipwreck ecosystem that is a hotspot for biodiversity. Moments like this remind us how much life can still exist in offshore Mediterranean waters and how important it is to protect it from preventable threats like abandoned fishing gear or overfishing.’
Although the great white population is well established in the Mediterranean, only rare surface sightings have previously been recorded.
Marine experts collaborating with the mission described the sighting as highly unusual and scientifically valuable, while stressing that further analysis and monitoring will be needed before any broader ecological conclusions can be drawn.
‘Most of our knowledge on the white sharks in the Mediterranean Sea comes from records of dead specimens caught by fishing operations,’ said Dr Carlo Cattano, researcher at the Sicily Marine Centre of the Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn.
‘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.
‘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.’
Shipwrecks often function as artificial reefs and attract a rich variety of marine species, however, they also catch abandoned, lost and discarded fishing gear (ALDFG) drifting through the water.
Known collectively as ‘ghost gear’, nets that settle on the wrecks turn them into giant underwater traps, entangling and killing the marine life they also attract.
Removing the nets is vitally important work, and is carried out alongside other scientific studies. The mission off Sicily in which the shark was spotted also included environmental DNA (eDNA) sampling and underwater monitoring to improve understanding of the species present in the area.
Healthy Seas says that most of the visual and scientific material collected during the mission, including footage of the net recovery, marine life around the wreck and the shark encounter, will be released in the coming weeks.
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