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These formidable predators in the Mediterranean Sea are in danger of disappearing, with poaching being a key factor to their rapid population drop.

This conclusion is based on research by scientists, who partnered with an marine preservation group. They report that various at-risk marine animals – including great white sharks – are found on sale in marketplaces across Northern African nations.

Great whites are one of more than 20 Mediterranean shark species safeguarded by global treaties, which prohibits to target them or to trade them.

However, by monitoring fishing ports along the Mediterranean coast of North Africa, investigators discovered that a minimum of forty great white sharks have been slaughtered in that region in just the past year.

Social media clips showing sharks under protection being brought dead into North African ports has been confirmed.

One piece of footage showed a sizeable great white shark being hauled ashore from a fishing boat in an Algerian port. A separate video, taken in a Tunisian location, shows heads and fins of what looks like a protected mako, which is also a species at risk.

Final Refuge

The project head, explained that many populations of sharks – white sharks in particular – had declined dramatically in the Mediterranean in recent decades.

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

The Mediterranean white shark population is now classified as Critically Endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

In their new mission to locate and research the predators, the team worked in the Strait of Sicily – an area identified as a "final refuge" in the Mediterranean for several sharks at risk.

One key aim of their expedition was to fit a satellite tracking tag onto a shark – something that has not yet been accomplished in the Mediterranean Sea.

To try this, the researchers used over three tons of bait – including baitfish and hundreds of liters of tuna oil to create a "fat slick" that many sharks can sense from far off.

After two weeks of work – laying bait, collecting water samples to test for environmental DNA and using subsea cameras – the researchers failed to encounter any animals to tag.

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

"It's discouraging," the lead researcher said. "It just shows how depleted this marine environment is."

During their search for remaining sharks, they also were informed that a juvenile great white had been caught and killed in a fishery off North Africa – just a short distance from where they were working.

It is not clear whether that specimen was accidentally caught in fishing gear, or if it was deliberately caught.

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

Illegal Shark Trade

The researchers, along with colleagues in North Africa, are keeping watch on multiple ports in the region. Findings shows that sharks under protection are caught, landed and offered for sale in countries including the region.

The rules that protect sharks are complex. Currently, 24 threatened species have treaty-based safeguards – such as makos, angel sharks, threshers, and hammerheads.

An multinational pact states that those species cannot be "retained on board, transhipped, landed, transferred, stored, sold or displayed or offered for sale".

The agreement states "they must be returned to the sea alive [where] possible". Those rules do not address incidental capture and enforcement is variable from nation to nation.

A conservationist noted that his own investigation found multiple white 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."

Possible Solutions

In less affluent areas in North Africa, fishers who catch sharks might face the choice of whether to feed their family, or return a threatened species to the ocean.

"Why would they throw sharks back into the sea when they require sustenance for their families?" asked a scientist. "If you provide alternatives and education in more selective 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."