Where are the sharks in Europe?

[leapfrog]

spain has the world's largest shark finning fleet - that probably answers the question.

I'm not questioning whether this is correct or not but could ou qualify this information and what the source is, please? It would seem to me that it would be the Japanese but I have no data.

 

[frenchiegirl]

a few weeks ago a couple of basking shark where seen by divers very close to the shore near Marseilles.

Unfortunately, the divers were no longer underwater but already back on the boat and heading home

 

[Rhone Man]

They do seem to be disappearing quickly: BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Fast fall of Mediterranean sharks

 

[ScubaErgoSum]

Lots of basking sharks around the Isle of Man in summer, usually reasonably happy to tolerate a snorkellor if youre quiet and still. I guarantee seeing a big one underwater when you dont expect it will ruin your air consumption figures! The blue shark trips off cornwall look ace.

 

[chris_hull23]

ddddd

 

[scubaal72]

yep in the holds of long liners as another poster said....sad really....six gilled sharks are around Southern French coast...a few got hauled out by a fisherman out of Cagnes Sur Mer the other year....sad truth is that they are exceptionally rare and of course one of the most blatant examples of the human races' greedy over exploitation of the oceans

 

[Jerome_Smeets]

Informative and updated website on sharks worldwide :Shark Year Magazine | Shark News and Information all year long at Shark Year . com

 

[FinnMom]

Believe it or not, an oceanic whitetip once washed up on the eastern coast of Sweden. WAY beyond the straits of Denmark.

 

[drbill]

Undoubtedly something similar to our situation here off the coast of SoCal. When I first started diving these waters in the late 60s, sharks of several kinds abounded. Blue sharks were seen very frequently... often numbering in the dozens just on the way from one dive site to another on the boat. Today it is a very rare sighting. I think I've only seen one blue shark at the surface while on a dive boat. We stopped oiffering shark dives because a full dayt of chumming well offshore (5-13 miles) might yield a few small blues and a mako or two. Long liners and gillnetters got the majority of them and even though we've put bans on those activities in place off our coast, sharks recover slowly. Fortunately some species like soupfin (tope) sharks and angel sharks appear to be rebounding, possibly great whites too, but it is a slow process for sharks in general.

 

[danvolker]

According to fish books there are a lot of sharks species in north atlantic and the med , but encounters seem to be pretty rare..(except the occasionnal dogfish here and there)
If you encountered sharks anywhere in European / English/Irish waters ,please post here !

I have done some diving off the coast of Italy, and it appears they have eaten(caught) all the fish except for the ones less than a few inches long... I would think a shark large enough to be dangerous, would have been caught and sold as "scallops". But with the lack of fish, there will be few sharks. I saw some Spearfisherman off of an area near Tropea that were swimming out a mile, to shoot trout sized fish, and then swim back....there is virtually no concern regarding sharks--just not enough large marine life to sustain many. There must be "some" places in the Mediterranean where more marine life exists, and where sharks are more common, but I would bet on many centuries of over-fishing to have destroyed the healthy balance that would have been there prior to the time of the Romans and the Greeks.