Overview
- Volunteer divers from Ghost Diving, Healthy Seas and SDSS recorded video and photos of an estimated four‑metre adult great white at an offshore shipwreck in the Strait of Sicily, footage released on Monday.
- The sighting occurred during a ghost‑net removal mission on a wreck between Sicily and Tunisia and the shark was filmed swimming calmly and accompanied by pilot fish near discarded fishing gear.
- Scientists say live underwater records are scarce for Mediterranean great whites and that most prior knowledge came from dead animals caught in fisheries, so the footage offers new data on distribution and behavior.
- Conservation groups used the encounter to warn that abandoned nets and heavy fishing threaten the small, IUCN‑listed critically endangered regional population and to press for increased monitoring and protections.
- Divers and experts emphasized the event took place far offshore and does not signal a coastal safety risk, and they urged that the footage be used for research and policy action rather than to provoke harm to the animal.