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The iconic great white in the Mediterranean waters are facing a serious threat of extinction, with unlawful fishing practices being a significant driver to their rapid population drop.

This assessment is based on studies conducted by experts, who collaborated with an international conservation charity. They report that various at-risk marine animals – including great white sharks – are being sold in ports across Northern African nations.

These sharks are one of in excess of 20 Mediterranean shark species protected under international law, which makes it illegal to fish for them or to sell them.

However, by monitoring fishing ports along the Mediterranean coast of North Africa, scientists discovered that at least 40 great white sharks have been slaughtered in that region in just the past year.

Social media clips showing sharks under protection being brought dead into North African ports has been confirmed.

One piece of footage showed a large great white being pulled from a boat from a trawler in Algeria. Additional footage, recorded in Tunisia, shows heads and fins of what looks like a mako shark, which is also a threatened and protected species.

Final Refuge

The project head, clarified that many populations of sharks – great whites especially – had plummeted in the Mediterranean in the past years.

"No other stretch of water is subjected to such fishing pressure as the Mediterranean Sea," he said. "The effects of large-scale fishing has been increasing... and it's plausible that they will become extinct in the foreseeable future."

The population of great whites in the Mediterranean is now listed as Critically Endangered by the global conservation union.

In their new mission to find and study the predators, the team worked in the Sicilian Strait – an area considered a "key remaining habitat" in the Mediterranean for several sharks at risk.

A primary objective of their mission was to attach a satellite tag onto a great white – something that has not yet been accomplished in the Mediterranean Sea.

To do this, the researchers used a large amount of chum – including baitfish and hundreds of liters of tuna oil to create a "oil slick" that many sharks can detect from a great distance.

Despite working for two weeks – baiting the ocean, collecting water samples to search for shark DNA and using remote cameras – the researchers failed to encounter any sharks to tag.

They captured only a brief glimpse of one blue shark species on their underwater cameras.

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

As the team searched for surviving sharks, they also learned that a young great white shark had been taken in a fishery off North Africa – just 20 nautical miles from where they were working.

It is unknown whether that specimen was caught by accident in fishing gear, or if it was deliberately caught.

The team, however, calculates that over forty great white sharks have been caught around that coast. "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. Evidence shows that sharks under protection are captured, brought to port, and sold in countries including Tunisia and Algeria.

The regulations safeguarding sharks are multifaceted. Currently, 24 threatened species have international legal protection – including mako, angel, 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 returned to the sea alive [where] possible". Those rules do not tackle incidental capture and compliance varies from one place to another.

A marine advocate noted that his own research found several great whites on sale. But, he said, there was a paradoxical element of hope in the fact that white sharks were appearing in trade.

"It shows that there is animals still there," he said. "And if we can protect this, there is a hope for revival."

Possible Solutions

In economically challenged regions in North Africa, fishing communities who catch sharks might face the choice of whether to feed their family, or throw back an endangered shark to the ocean.

"Why would they release sharks into the sea when they need food for their children?" asked a regional marine biologist. "If you assist and guide them in more selective fishing, they will not catch protected species."

An advocate added that if countries around the Mediterranean collaborated, "there is hope."

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