---
title: "First video of a great white shark in the Mediterranean: divers encounter a giant in the Strait of Sicily"
description: "Historic moment: divers film a great white shark in the Mediterranean for the first time! 🦈🌊 The encounter took place in the Strait of Sicily during the cleanup of abandoned nets. Experts link the rarity of such sightings to the population decline caused by poaching and climate change. 🌍📉"
date: 2026-06-09T12:39:41.000Z
lang: en
url: https://xab.info/en/posts/first-video-of-a-great-white-shark-in-the-mediterranean
tags: []
publisher: "XAB.info"
---

# First video of a great white shark in the Mediterranean: divers encounter a giant in the Strait of Sicily

![Great white shark swimming in the deep waters of the Mediterranean Sea, surrounded by a school of striped fish, in the Strait of Sicily](https://xab.info/media/2026/06/09/pervoe-video-beloj-akuly-v-sredizemnom-more/pervoe-video-beloj-akuly-v-sredizemnom-more-1.webp)

A unique event has occurred in the depths of the Mediterranean Sea, according to experts. For the first time in history, divers have managed to capture a great white shark on video in this region. The chance encounter took place in the Strait of Sicily, which separates Italy and Tunisia, serving as proof that these predators still inhabit these waters despite their rarity.

### Encounter with a giant at depth

The incident occurred while a group of technical divers was carrying out an ecological mission — cleaning a sunken ship of abandoned fishing nets. The predator appeared suddenly, approaching the humans to within just three meters. According to Derk Remmers, a technical diver and head of the German branch of Ghost Diving, the expedition participants experienced shock and admiration simultaneously.

"My fingers were shaking, that's for sure — it was a huge animal, and we completely didn't expect this," Remmers recalls. The shark swam past, turned around, and looked intently at the divers. The giant's behavior was calm and curious, but not aggressive. The animal seemed to feel like the master of these waters. The encounter ended when the divers began releasing air bubbles: the shark sped up slightly and disappeared into the blue depths.

### Threat of extinction and the problem of ghost nets

Although scientists estimate that several hundred great white sharks inhabit the Mediterranean Sea, their numbers are rapidly declining due to illegal fishing. This is why it was previously impossible to record the presence of the predator on video. The situation is exacerbated by the problem of "ghost nets".

According to experts, about 640,000 fishing nets are lost or discarded in the world's waters annually. Many of them remain on reefs and sunken ships, continuing to kill marine life that gets entangled in them. Divers, like Remmers' group, are trying to combat this phenomenon by removing dangerous structures, but the scale of the problem remains huge.

### Global context: migration and climate

The event in the Mediterranean is taking place against a backdrop of worrying trends in other parts of the world. Recently, there has been a sharp increase in the number of fatal shark attacks in Australia: three incidents were recorded in just four weeks. Australian scientists link this to climate change.

Rising ocean temperatures and increased population density in coastal areas are changing shark migration routes, forcing them to appear more often in places where they did not previously encounter humans. While divers in the Mediterranean observed a calm giant, in other regions of the world, changes in the predators' habitat are becoming a risk factor for human safety.