Divers working to remove abandoned fishing nets from a shipwreck in the Strait of Sicily have captured the first ever footage of an adult great white shark in the Mediterranean Sea in its natural habitat — a discovery that researchers say is of major scientific significance and could reshape understanding of where the world’s most feared predator now roams.
The encounter was filmed by Derk Remmers, a diver from ocean conservation organisation Healthy Seas, while the team was recovering ghost nets from a wreck located in the Strait of Sicily, a key biodiversity hotspot between Sicily and Tunisia that is also one of the most heavily fished areas in the Mediterranean. While great white sharks have occasionally been glimpsed at the surface in Mediterranean waters, no underwater footage of the species in the sea has ever been documented before.
Remmers described the moment in terms that capture just how extraordinary the encounter was. “Statistically, it is way more likely to win the lotto jackpot than to meet such an iconic animal underwater,” he said. “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.”
Veronika Mikos, Director of Healthy Seas, said the context of the sighting added to its power. “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.”
Dr Carlo Cattano, a researcher at the Sicily Marine Centre of the Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, said the footage was of exceptional scientific value for a species that is critically endangered and poorly understood. “Most of our knowledge on white sharks in the Mediterranean comes from records of dead specimens caught by fishing operations. Observations like this are extremely valuable for improving our understanding of the distribution, habits, and behaviour of this critically endangered species. This sighting is particularly significant in validating the conservation value of this area.”
Great white sharks are typically found in temperate and subtropical coastal waters, particularly in the northeastern Pacific, southern Africa and Oceania. Their presence in the Mediterranean has long been a matter of debate among marine biologists, with only surface sightings previously recorded. The new footage suggests the species may now be ranging significantly further into European waters than previously documented.
The sighting comes shortly after separate research warned that great whites could soon appear off British coastlines as ocean temperatures rise due to climate change. Researchers writing in The Conversation noted that fossil evidence suggested the ancestors of modern great white sharks once hunted in the southern North Sea between the UK, Belgium and Denmark, and that warming conditions could recreate the environment that made such a presence possible. Unconfirmed sightings off Cornwall and northern Scotland have added further weight to speculation that the species may already be closer to British shores than official records suggest.
