40 Protected Great White Sharks Killed in a Single Year. Nobody Is Being Held Accountable.

25 June 2026 | White Shark Ocean

In 2025, researchers monitoring fishing ports along the North African Mediterranean coast documented at least 40 great white sharks being killed there in a single year.

Forty. In one year. Of a population the IUCN classifies as Critically Endangered.

These sharks have been fully protected under the Barcelona Convention since 2018. Their capture, sale and trade are illegal under international law. And yet, according to research published by Dr. Francesco Ferretti of Virginia Tech, working with the UK charity Blue Marine Foundation, the killing continues openly — in broad daylight, in public ports, with carcasses sold in market stalls.

The BBC independently verified the findings with social media footage showing protected great white sharks being hauled ashore from fishing boats in Algeria. James Glancy from Blue Marine documented white sharks being sold openly in Tunisian fish markets. "Great white sharks are among more than 20 shark species in the Mediterranean protected under international law," Dr. Ferretti told reporters. "Making their capture or sale illegal has not been enough."

The Last Stronghold

The Strait of Sicily — the stretch of water between the island of Sicily and the North African coast — has long been identified as one of the last remaining strongholds for Mediterranean great white sharks. It is one of the few areas where sightings, however rare, still occur with any regularity. Deeper water, some remaining prey populations, relative distance from the most heavily trafficked shipping lanes: on paper, it offers conditions the sharks need.

Dr. Ferretti's team travelled to the Strait specifically to study the population and, ideally, to attach a satellite tracking tag to a great white — something that has never been successfully achieved anywhere in the Mediterranean. If you could tag one, you could begin to understand where they go, how many remain, whether any active reproduction is occurring.

They never found one.

Despite deploying baits, underwater cameras and all available survey methods in what should be prime habitat, the team could not locate a single great white shark to tag. "It's plausible that they will go extinct in the near future," Dr. Ferretti said. "No other stretch of water is fished like the Mediterranean Sea."

A Population Three Million Years in the Making

The tragedy here is amplified by what we now know about the Mediterranean great white population's history. As we covered in our earlier post on the Ghost Sharks of the Mediterranean, the 2020 University of Bologna genetics study confirmed that these sharks have been genetically isolated from Atlantic populations for approximately 3.2 million years. They are not visitors. They are not a peripheral offshoot. They are a distinct evolutionary lineage — one that has survived ice ages, continental drift and every natural disruption the planet could throw at it for over three million years.

What they may not survive is two centuries of industrial fishing and forty deaths in a single year.

Once this lineage is gone, it is gone permanently. There is no repopulating the Mediterranean from Atlantic stock that would restore what is lost. The genetic heritage of 3.2 million years of separate evolution cannot be recreated. Extinction here is not a setback. It is an irreversible ending.

The Enforcement Gap

International legal protection, in the absence of enforcement, is a piece of paper. The Barcelona Convention protects great white sharks in the Mediterranean on paper. CITES Appendix II regulates their international trade on paper. The reality documented by Ferretti's team is that sharks are being caught, landed, sold and consumed in open markets, and nobody is being prosecuted.

The enforcement problem is structural. The North African Mediterranean coastline spans thousands of kilometres across multiple sovereign nations with varying institutional capacity, different fisheries management regimes, and limited resources for marine law enforcement. Fishing communities that have depended on these waters for generations are not going to stop fishing because of a convention signed in Barcelona.

What might change things is economic incentive. Shark ecotourism — the same model that operates in Mossel Bay, in the Bahamas, at Guadalupe Island — consistently demonstrates that a living shark is worth far more over its lifetime than a dead one. A single great white shark at a dive site can generate hundreds of thousands of dollars in ecotourism revenue annually. The same shark, caught and sold in a market, is worth a few hundred. The economic case for protection is overwhelming. The challenge is building the institutional infrastructure to make that case land in communities where the immediate value of catch is the only visible option.

The Pattern We Keep Seeing

What is happening in the Mediterranean is an extreme version of a pattern visible across every great white habitat in the world. Legal protection is given with one hand and undermined with the other. South Africa protected great whites in 1991 — and then continued running shark nets that kill more than 20 per year. Australia listed the species as vulnerable in 1999 — and then continued operating drumline programs that have killed tens of thousands of sharks over the past six decades. The Mediterranean banned capture and sale in 2018 — and 40 were killed in 2025.

Protection on paper is the beginning, not the end. The species will not recover until the mechanisms that kill them are actually removed — the nets, the longlines, the drumlines, the unregulated fisheries. Every country with great white sharks faces a version of this choice. Most are choosing, so far, to protect the animal in law while leaving the killing infrastructure in place.

What Needs to Happen

Dr. Ferretti's research is a direct call for something that has not yet happened: a coordinated, properly funded Mediterranean great white shark conservation programme, with real enforcement, real monitoring, and real consequences for illegal fishing. The IUCN Shark Specialist Group and organisations including Blue Marine and MedSharks have been advocating for this for years.

The political will to make it happen is a separate and harder problem. But the scientific case is unambiguous. Forty great white sharks killed in one year, in a Critically Endangered population where researchers cannot find a single individual to tag, is not a management challenge that requires further study. It is an emergency that requires immediate action.

Three million years of evolutionary history. Forty deaths in a year. The mathematics of extinction rarely announce themselves more clearly than this.

Great white sharks are still present in Mossel Bay, South Africa — and every encounter supports local shark conservation. Book with White Shark Ocean at whitesharkocean.com.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are great white sharks protected in the Mediterranean?

Yes — great white sharks have been fully protected under the Barcelona Convention (the Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment and the Coastal Region of the Mediterranean) since 2018, and are listed on CITES Appendix II which regulates international trade. Despite this, research published in 2025 by Dr. Francesco Ferretti of Virginia Tech and the Blue Marine Foundation documented at least 40 great white sharks being killed in North African Mediterranean waters in a single year, with carcasses openly sold in fish markets in Algeria and Tunisia.

How many great white sharks are left in the Mediterranean?

No reliable population count exists, because no systematic survey programme has ever been established for the Mediterranean — a gap that is itself a conservation failure. The IUCN classifies the Mediterranean great white population as Critically Endangered. The severity of the situation was underlined when Dr. Ferretti's research team visited the Strait of Sicily — identified as a last stronghold for the species — and could not find a single great white shark to tag, despite extensive survey effort. Many researchers believe the population may number only in the dozens.

Why is the Mediterranean great white shark population unique?

The Mediterranean great white shark population has been genetically isolated from Atlantic populations for approximately 3.2 million years, making it a distinct evolutionary lineage rather than a population that could simply be replenished from Atlantic stock. A 2020 University of Bologna genetics study confirmed this separation dates to the Late Pliocene epoch, when shifts in sea level and ocean circulation gradually severed Mediterranean sharks from their Atlantic relatives. If this population goes extinct, 3.2 million years of separate evolutionary history is permanently lost.

What is the Blue Marine Foundation doing about Mediterranean sharks?

The Blue Marine Foundation is a UK-based marine conservation charity that has been working with researchers including Dr. Francesco Ferretti to document and publicise the illegal killing of protected sharks in North African Mediterranean waters. Their fieldwork in the Strait of Sicily gathered evidence of protected sharks being sold openly in markets, which the BBC independently verified through social media footage. Blue Marine is advocating for a coordinated Mediterranean shark conservation programme with real enforcement capacity, rather than legal protections that exist on paper but are not implemented.

What can be done to save Mediterranean great white sharks?

Researchers and conservation organisations including the IUCN Shark Specialist Group, Blue Marine Foundation and MedSharks identify three urgent priorities: genuine enforcement of existing protections (not just legislation without prosecution), establishment of a properly funded long-term monitoring programme including satellite tagging, and engagement with North African fishing communities to build economic alternatives to shark fishing — including ecotourism models that demonstrate the living value of sharks. The window for action is very narrow. With at least 40 individuals killed in a single year in a Critically Endangered population, the species may not survive long enough for slow-moving policy processes to deliver results.