Warning great white sharks could soon appear in UK waters including popular tourist destination
GREAT white sharks could soon appear in UK waters including a popular tourist destination, researchers have said.
Marine experts at Ocearch claimed the predators could migrate north from the Mediterranean in search of seals and begin appearing off the shores of northern France and around Cornwall.
Their investigations show that the creatures have been increasingly spotted off the New England coast in the US in recent years.
Chris Fischer, founder of Ocearch, told the Times: “We believe that Mediterranean white sharks should be moving north to feed on seals, like all the other populations we have worked on.
“We believe they should be moving up past Brest [in Brittany] and Cornwall.”
Ocearch, a non-profit group that tracks more than 400 sharks, plans to come to Britain next summer in the hope of finding great whites.
Cape Cod, a peninsula in Massachusetts, US – next to the island where the film Jaws was shot – has seen a spike in the number of great whites spotted off its coast in the past 50 years.
Their presence was virtually non-existent there before the 1970s.
However marine biologist Gregory Skomal poured cold water on the suggestion saying there have been zero white shark spottings around Cornwall.
“There’s no documented white sharks off Cornwall,” he said. “They should be there but they are not and we don’t know why.”
But great whites have been spotted around the UK since 1965, according to the University of Plymouth‘s records, with as many as 100 credible, but unconfirmed, sightings over the past 10 years.
A “great white shark” is thought to have been spotted lurking off the coast of Britain in February 2022.
An experienced shark fisherman said the creature seen near the beach at Goring-by-Sea in West Sussex was “obviously a shark” and it could be a “small, immature great white” searching for food.
Deadly killers could be swimming in UK waters
Fisherman claim to have spotted the sharks off the southern coast.
Great White Sharks are usually 4.5m (15ft) in length.
They are a blue-grey colour on the top of the bodies.
Strong bodies and powerful tails help the marine mammals swim as fast as 35mph.
They stay close to the surface of the water, so they can capture their prey more easily.
Most of the world’s Great White Sharks live off the coast of South Africa.
Their sense of smell is so good that the sharks can detect the scent of blood from three miles away.
Great White Sharks have a whopping 230 teeth in their mouth – making just one bite fatal.