🔗 Share this article

Great white sharks in the Mediterranean basin are in danger of disappearing, with poaching being a major contributor to their worrying decrease.

This finding is based on research by scientists, who worked alongside an international conservation charity. They note that several critically endangered species – like the great white shark – are being sold in marketplaces across Northern African nations.

Great white sharks are one of over twenty Mediterranean shark species safeguarded by global treaties, which renders it unlawful to fish for them or to sell them.

However, by monitoring fishing ports along the North African Mediterranean shoreline, investigators uncovered that at least 40 great white sharks have been caught and killed there in the single year of 2025.

Footage from social media showing endangered sharks being landed at North African ports has been authenticated.

One video showed a big shark being pulled from a boat from a vessel in an Algerian port. A separate video, filmed in Tunisia, shows remains and fins of what looks like a protected mako, which is also a protected and endangered species.

Final Refuge

The project head, clarified that many shark species – particularly great whites – had plummeted in the Mediterranean in the past years.

"No other stretch of water is fished like the Mediterranean Sea," he said. "The impact of industrial fishing has been growing... and it's plausible that they will vanish in the near future."

The Mediterranean white shark population is now designated as Critically Endangered by the global conservation union.

In their most recent effort to track and analyze the sharks, the team worked in the Sicilian Strait – an area known as a "key remaining habitat" in the Mediterranean for several endangered shark species.

A primary objective of their expedition was to deploy a tracking device onto a shark – something that has not yet been accomplished in the Mediterranean Sea.

To do this, the researchers used more than three tonnes of bait – including frozen mackerel and tuna scraps and 500 litres of fish oil to create a "fat slick" that many sharks can smell from hundreds of metres away.

After two weeks of work – chumming the water, sampling for DNA to look for genetic material and using remote cameras – the researchers were unable to locate any animals to tag.

They captured only a fleeting sighting of one blue shark species on their cameras.

"It's disheartening," the lead researcher said. "It just shows how damaged this habitat is."

While the team was searching for living sharks, they also learned that a young great white shark had been taken in a regional fishery – just not far from where they were working.

It is not clear whether that shark was ensnared unintentionally in nets or lines, or if it was hunted.

The team, however, estimates that over forty great white sharks have been taken along that coastline. "This is a lot for a critically endangered population," the researcher emphasized.

Illegal Shark Trade

The team, along with colleagues in North Africa, are monitoring several fishing ports in the region. Documentation shows that endangered sharks are taken and traded in countries including several North African nations.

The regulations safeguarding sharks are complex. Currently, two dozen endangered species have treaty-based safeguards – such as makos, angel sharks, threshers, and hammerheads.

An multinational pact states that those species cannot be "kept on boats, transferred, landed, stored, or sold".

The agreement specifies "they must be released unharmed and alive [where] possible". Those rules do not address incidental capture and implementation differs from nation to nation.

A expert noted that his own inquiry found several great whites on sale. But, he said, there was a seeming silver lining in the fact that white sharks were being found in markets.

"It shows that there is life remaining," he said. "And if we can preserve this, there is a chance of recovery."

Possible Solutions

In poorer communities in North Africa, fishermen who catch sharks might face the decision of whether to feed their family, or return a threatened species to the ocean.

"Why would they discard their catch into the sea when they require sustenance for their families?" asked a scientist. "If you support them and train them in more sustainable fishing, they will not catch protected species."

A conservationist added that if countries around the Mediterranean worked together, "there is hope."

"But," he continued, "we've got to act very quickly."