Great white sharks are appearing off the Alicante coast. The problem is that we don’t know if it’s good news or bad news.

On April 20, 2023, by pure chance, some fishermen caught a juvenile-sized white shark. No one would have been surprised if it weren’t for the fact that the fishermen were in Spanish waters, right in front of the Alicante Cape of La Nao.

Two meters 10 centimeters of white shark in the middle of the Mediterranean, what was happening here?

Do we have to worry? That is the question that was asked at the Spanish Institute of Oceanography and, in collaboration with the University of Cádiz, has carried out a deep review of the presence of white sharks in the Mediterranean Sea. It is not something superficial: they have collected all the records (direct and indirect) from 1862 to 2023 and have reached a surprising conclusion.

The presence of this type of specimen has been “persistent” (although “extremely rare”) in the Spanish Mediterranean.

It is not something, a priori, worrying. As explained José Carlos Báezresearcher at the IEO-CSIC, “we have only found two attacks: one in 1862, in which a person died in Malaga who was swimming, and another in the eighties, when a shark bit a surfer’s board in Tarifa and caused serious injuries.”

But the problem is not that. And, although “with the available data, it is not possible to affirm that the Mediterranean white shark population is recovering”, it is inevitable to think about what will happen in an increasingly warmer sea.

In the end, “the presence of young individuals provides key information about the demographic structure of the species” and, one way or anotherthis leads us to seriously consider the risks of having breeding spaces in Spanish waters.

However, everything seems to indicate that there is a relationship between the presence of the shark and the routes of the bluefin tuna. If so, it would be another symptom of the problems that sharks have to keep their populations healthy and robust.

Should we worry? It doesn’t seem like it. Against the media angle about the “return of the monster”, international evidence tells us that attacks are extremely rare and the role of sharks in the conservation of aquatic ecosystems is very important.

Be that as it may, monitoring and conservation programs must be developed. And it has to be done soon.

Image | Oleksandr Sushko

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