Illegal fishing is rapidly contributing to the disappearance of great white sharks from the Mediterranean Sea, scientists working in partnership with the Blue Marine Foundation warned the BBC in an article published on Tuesday.
The American scientists warned that threatened shark species, in addition to several other at-risk species, were being trafficked to fish markets in North Africa.
The Mediterranean white shark population is classified as Critically Endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
Protected by international law, great whites are one of more than 20 threatened species inhabiting Mediterranean waters. It is illegal to fish or sell great whites, though the market for them remains active.
Rare sharks found in North African fish markets
Researchers complained that in 2025 alone, at least 40 of the oceanic predators were killed on North African coasts.
The BBC confirmed it reviewed independently verified footage of a fishing boat hauling in a great white in Algeria and another video showing the head and fins of a short-finned mako shark in Tunisia.
Dr. Francesco Ferretti, from the US university Virginia Tech, told the British outlet, "No other stretch of water is fished like the Mediterranean Sea…The impact of industrial fishing has been intensifying... and it's plausible that they will go extinct in the near future.”
Attempting to prevent a further decline in the endangered species’s numbers, Ferretti’s research team has set up a base on the Strait of Sicily, the “last stronghold” of the great white.
The team has been attempting to attach tracking devices to the sharks, but their efforts have not yet been successful because the species remains elusive.
"It's disheartening," Dr. Ferretti said. "It just shows how degraded this ecosystem is."
Only 20 nautical miles from the research base, the team learned that a juvenile great white was caught and killed by a North African fishery.