Divers caught a rare glimpse and even a video of a Great White cruising the Mediterranean during an organized deep-sea clean-up.
According to a video released by the well-known NGO Healthy Seas and Ghost Diving, the Great White paid them a brief visit while the team was inspecting a ghost net and preparing for the net to be lifted out of the sea.
In the video on LinkedIn, the NGOs explain that they were in the central Mediterranean with their long term partner SDSS: The Society for Documentation of Submerged Sites, preparing to remove a massive fishing net from a shipwreck in which many marine animals had already gotten trapped and died.
During the mission, a Great White shark swam by to check out the commotion and eventually left the area. Conservationists and scientists are excited by the footage, as Great White sharks are known to inhabit the Mediterranean but are rarely seen and remain highly elusive.
The NGOs suggest that this may be the first underwater video of a Great White in the Mediterranean.
The news comes amid a recent increase in great white shark sightings around the world, several shark attacks, and reports of other shark species appearing off the Greek coast.
Scientists are monitoring the human-shark encounters, which they say are driven by a combination of climate-driven habitat shifts, prey movement, reproductive needs, human activity, and even conservation success.
Experts note that broader ecological changes in marine environments are expected to increase the likelihood of human-shark encounters in the future.
