This article was originally written by Lauren Wilkin for SWNS — the U.K.’s largest independent news agency, providing globally relevant original, verified, and engaging content to the world’s leading media outlets.
A team of volunteer divers removing abandoned fishing nets from the Strait of Sicily last month came face-to-face with an adult great white shark. One crew member filmed the encounter, and the resulting recording — released Monday in honor of World Oceans Day — is thought to be the first underwater footage of the species in the Mediterranean.
The mission was organized by the Healthy Seas Foundation in partnership with global nonprofit Ghost Diving and The Society for Documentation of Submerged Sites. The strait is both a biodiversity hotspot and a heavily exploited fishing area, so the orgs teamed up to recover old nets from a shipwreck and reduce the risk of animals getting trapped by discarded gear.
Ghost Diving volunteer Derk Remmers captured the footage and photos of the great white, a once-in-a-lifetime experience given that the sharks are endangered in the Mediterranean.
“Statistically, it is way more likely to win the lotto jackpot than to meet such an iconic animal underwater. You spend decades diving wrecks and removing ghost nets, but nothing prepares you for a moment like this,” Remmers said in a press release. “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.”
Previous dives at the site documented marine animals trapped in abandoned fishing gear, including several endangered loggerhead sea turtles and large fish species.
“Most of our knowledge on the white sharks in the Mediterranean Sea comes from records of dead specimens caught by fishing operations,” explained 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 behavior of this critically endangered species, whose survival is threatened by human activities.”
As for Remmers’ emotional state when he saw the shark? “I should say I wasn’t afraid at all, but it’s not true,” he joked to CNN, telling the outlet that, while he knows humans aren’t typical prey for a great white, he couldn’t help hoping that the shark was aware of that fact as well. He added: “I needed desperately to get the camera running because no one would ever believe we had seen a white shark with no evidence.”
In the news release, Healthy Seas Director Veronika Mikos, elaborated on the value of ghost net removal missions: “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.”
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