Five-metre great white shark spotted off Majorca in first confirmed sighting in decades
Agreat white shark has been spotted in a marine park in Spain’s Balearic Islands, in the first confirmed sighting of the predator in Spanish waters for more than four decades.
The five-metre (16.4 ft) shark was tracked for more than an hour by an international conservation team in the Cabrera Archipelago National Park, a reserve six miles off the southern coast of Majorca.
The team from Alnitak, a Spanish conservation project with researchers from several European countries including the United Kingdom, published an image of the shark following the “historic sighting” on Thursday.
The organisation said it would be releasing more footage and images later on Friday.
Shark sighting
Ten researchers, including British woman Georgina Stevens, were on board Alnitak’s vessel conducting data collection and monitoring when the shark was sighted, the group said.
While there have been unconfirmed sightings and rumours of great white sharks in Spanish waters over the years, this is believed to be the first confirmed incident since 1976, when a Majorca fisherman caught a specimen measuring more than six metres.
In 2006, a Spanish documentary film said that 27 great whites had been caught by fisherman in the Balearics between 1920 and 1976. But since then, the species had all but disappeared.
Alnitak said that the presence of great white sharks in Spanish waters was the subject of a “constant rumour”, supported by historic photographs and even local place names in the Balearic Islands and along Mediterranean coastline of mainland Spain.
“However, since many years ago it has not been possible to document this like it has (now) been done,” the group said in a statement.
The only national park in the Balearic Islands, the uninhabited Cabrera Archipelago can be visited by boat on day trips from Majorca.
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