A diver who filmed an incredibly rare encounter with a great white shark in the Mediterranean Sea. He described the moment as “very special”.
When you think of the Mediterranean Sea, great white sharks probably aren’t the first image that comes to mind. But recently, a group of divers filmed what they believe to be the first underwater video of a Great white shark swimming in the Mediterranean.
The images were captured by divers working with the non-governmental organization Healthy Seas, during a mission designed to draw attention to the problem of so-called “ghost fishing nets”.
The great white shark was filmed off the Strait of Sicily, he explained Derk Remmersvolunteer diver for the organization Ghost Diving, at .
Remmers was participating in a foundation dive aimed at removing some of the many abandoned fishing nets in that area. The shark was so close that his fingers trembled while trying to get the camera to work.
“Statistically, it is much more likely to win the Euromillions jackpot than encountering such an iconic animal underwater,” Remmers explained. “We’ve spent decades diving into wrecks and removing fishing nets, but nothing prepares us for a moment like this.”
Although great white sharks are known to exist in the Mediterranean, their presence is extremely rare. In 2024, a team of researchers conducted an extensive study of these animals in that region, but, after three years of searcheswere unable to find no copy.
“We conducted 359 hours of BRUV operations, 43 hours of submersible camera footage, 52 hours of longline fishing, 35 hours of rod and reel fishing, and 24 hours of hand line fishing, and collected 159 water samples for environmental DNA analysis,” the researchers wrote at the time, in a published in Frontiers in Marine Science.
