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These formidable predators in the Mediterranean basin are facing a serious threat of extinction, with poaching being a significant driver to their worrying decrease.

This finding is based on investigations carried out by researchers, who partnered with an international conservation charity. They indicate that various at-risk marine animals – such as the great white – are being sold in ports across North Africa.

Great whites are one of over twenty Mediterranean shark species safeguarded by global treaties, which prohibits to catch them or to trade them.

However, by monitoring fishing ports along the coastline of North Africa, the research team discovered that a minimum of forty great white sharks have been killed there in 2025 alone.

Footage from social media showing endangered sharks being landed at North African ports has been confirmed.

A particular clip showed a large great white being hauled ashore from a fishing boat in Algeria. Another, taken in a Tunisian location, shows remains and fins of what appears to be a protected mako, which is also a threatened and protected species.

Last Shark Stronghold

The project head, stated that many shark species – great whites especially – had declined dramatically in the Mediterranean in the last few decades.

"No other stretch of water is exploited as heavily as the Mediterranean Sea," he said. "The impact of industrial fishing has been increasing... and it's likely that they will become extinct in the coming years."

The Mediterranean great whites is now classified as Critically Endangered by the key international body.

In their most recent effort to track and analyze the sharks, the team worked in the Sicilian Strait – an area known as a "key remaining habitat" in the Mediterranean for several threatened shark species.

An important goal of their mission was to fit a satellite tracking tag onto a great white – something that has never been done in the Mediterranean Sea.

To try this, the researchers used over three tons of chum – including baitfish and hundreds of liters of fish oil to create a "oil slick" that many sharks can detect from a great distance.

Even after a fortnight of effort – chumming the water, taking samples of seawater to search for shark DNA and using underwater cameras – the researchers failed to encounter any specimens.

They captured only a short sighting of one shark on their cameras.

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

During their search for living sharks, they also learned that a juvenile great white had been taken in a North African fishery – just 20 nautical miles from where they were working.

It is not clear whether that shark was caught by accident in fishing gear, or if it was deliberately caught.

The team, however, calculates that more than 40 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 scientists, along with regional contacts, are monitoring several fishing ports in the region. Findings shows that endangered sharks are taken and traded in countries including Tunisia and Algeria.

The protective legislation are complex. Currently, 24 threatened species have global protection – 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 mandates "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 a number of sharks on sale. But, he said, there was a seeming silver lining in the fact that white sharks were appearing in trade.

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

The Path Forward

In poorer communities in North Africa, fishing communities who catch sharks might face the decision of whether to feed their family, or return a threatened species to the ocean.

"Why would they release sharks into the sea when they require sustenance for their families?" asked a scientist. "If you support them and train them in more sustainable fishing, they will not catch these sharks."

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

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