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These formidable predators in the Mediterranean Sea are on the verge of vanishing, with poaching being a key factor to their worrying decrease.

This conclusion is based on investigations carried out by researchers, who worked alongside an international conservation charity. They indicate that various at-risk marine animals – including great white sharks – are found on sale in fish markets across the North African coast.

Great whites are one of over twenty Mediterranean shark species protected under international law, which prohibits to fish for them or to trade them.

However, by surveying docks along the Mediterranean coast of North Africa, investigators found that at least 40 great white sharks have been caught and killed there in just the past year.

Footage from social media showing sharks under protection being landed at North African ports has been authenticated.

One piece of footage showed a big shark being pulled from a boat from a trawler in an Algerian port. Additional footage, taken in a Tunisian location, shows remains and fins of what is believed to be a mako shark, which is also a species at risk.

Final Refuge

The project head, stated that many shark species – particularly great whites – had declined dramatically in the Mediterranean in the past years.

"No other body of water is fished like the Mediterranean Sea," he said. "The impact of industrial fishing has been intensifying... and it's likely that they will become extinct in the foreseeable future."

The Mediterranean great whites is now designated as Critically Endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

In their most recent effort to track and analyze the predators, the team worked in the Strait of Sicily – an area considered a "final refuge" in the Mediterranean for several endangered shark species.

One key aim of their project was to fit a satellite tracking tag onto a white shark – something that has never been done in the Mediterranean Sea.

To do this, the researchers used over three tons of chum – including baitfish and hundreds of liters of tuna oil to create a "fat slick" that many sharks can smell from hundreds of metres away.

Despite working for two weeks – baiting the ocean, taking samples of seawater to search for shark DNA and using subsea cameras – the researchers were unable to locate any specimens.

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

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

During their search for remaining sharks, they also learned that a juvenile great white 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 ensnared unintentionally in nets or lines, or if it was targeted.

The team, however, calculates that in excess of 40 great white sharks have been harvested in that area. "This is a lot for a critically endangered population," the researcher emphasized.

Protected Sharks Traded

The scientists, along with regional contacts, are monitoring several fishing ports in the region. Findings shows that endangered sharks are captured, brought to port, and sold in countries including Tunisia and Algeria.

The protective legislation are complicated. Currently, numerous species have treaty-based safeguards – such as makos, angel sharks, threshers, and hammerheads.

An regional treaty states that those species cannot be "kept on boats, transferred, landed, stored, or sold".

The agreement states "they must be returned to the sea alive [where] possible". Those rules are not designed for accidental bycatch and enforcement is variable from nation to nation.

A conservationist noted that his own research found multiple white sharks on sale. But, he said, there was a paradoxical element of hope in the fact that white sharks were turning up for sale.

"It shows that there is animals still there," he said. "And if we can safeguard this, there is a chance of recovery."

Possible Solutions

In poorer communities in North Africa, fishermen who catch sharks might face the decision of whether to feed their family, or release a protected animal to the ocean.

"Why would they throw sharks back into the sea when they must feed their households?" asked a scientist. "If you support them and train them in more responsible fishing, they will not catch protected species."

A conservationist added that if countries around the Mediterranean collaborated, "there is hope."

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