You've Never Seen Shark Footage Quite Like This

Divers cleaning up the seafloor in the Strait of Sicily ended up documenting something far more exciting than ghost nets: a great white shark cruising the Mediterranean's depths. Volunteer diver Derk Remmers, working with nonprofit groups Ghost Diving and Healthy Seas, this month captured what organizers say may be the first underwater video of a great white in the Mediterranean, where the species is known to live but is almost never seen—and typically only near the surface, per CBS News. Remmers described the proximity of the shark as nerve-rattling and called the encounter "insane," adding that it felt statistically less likely than winning the lottery.

He said the shark appeared curious, not aggressive, swimming by and then turning around once, as if to check on what the divers were doing, per Euronews. Their mission focused on removing abandoned fishing gear from marine "hotspots," where groups say animals including sea turtles have been found entangled. The surprise sighting, Remmers said, underscored the need to protect marine life from overfishing and discarded equipment. Great whites in the Mediterranean have been listed as critically endangered since 2016. They are believed to represent a distinct population "with limited regular interchange with nearby Atlantic great whites," Shark Trust says, per Sky News.