Update 2 | Great white? Fish in photo 'probably a short-fin mako shark'

A group of Maltese divers who posted a photo on Facebook posing with a shark are now being investigated by the police.

On Monday afternoon, the Environment and Resources Authority (ERA) said it had been in contact with the police since Saturday evening, after a photo was posted on Facebook, showing a group of Maltese divers with a shark they allegedly caught.

The ERA said the shark in the picture was probably a female short-fin mako shark, not a great white, although the two are similar in appearance.

In either case, both sharks are a protected species.

The ERA said its Monitoring and Compliance Unit was actively collaborating with the police as the investigation was on-going.

A spokesperson for animal rights parliamentary secretary Roderick Galdes also told MaltaToday that the case is being investigated by the Department of Fisheries.

Photos of the three men in wetsuits posing with the shark were posted on Facebook only to be removed a few hours later. 

In a Facebook post, Shaun Farell said “We caught it before it caught us. Whoever thinks we do not do anything, this is what we do.”

However, he later claimed that the photo is over a year old and that he had posted it on Saturday to “pick on of my friends”.

“We were working in Libya, and the shark was dead when we found it washed ashore,” he said.

The location of the catch was unknown but was thought to have taken place inside Maltese territorial waters.  

In 1999, two shark species; the great white shark and the basking shark became protected under Maltese law. Since then, a total of 15 shark species are protected. 

Malta was the first European country to protect the great white shark, an endangered species that cannot be fished or hunted.

However, marine biologist Alan Deidun warned that the divers are unlikely to face tough legal action even if they are found guilty of having caught the shark themselves.

“In these cases, fines for catching sharks normally run in the hundreds of euro,” he said. “It’s not a major deterrent and unfortunately some people still catch sharks as trophies. They think it gives them a tough-guy image, but what they fail to realize is that the sharks are on the brink of extinction. There are around 50 shark species in the central Mediterranean, and 96% of them – including the great white shark – are at risk of extinction.”

“While fines have been increased for the hunting of protected birds due to the media hype, the same cannot be said for marine creatures…some animals are more equal than others.”

Shark expert Alex Buttigieg, known as the ‘Sharkman’ said that he had seen the photo uploaded on Facebook by Farrell over a year ago. As such, there was a possibility that the photo had been taken before the shortfin mako was listed as a protected species.

He said that the men had probably found the shark trapped in tuna cages outside Maltese waters, and warned that the photo risks damaging Malta’s reputation on shark conservation in international circles. 

The deep-water trench between Malta and Sicily is said to contain the world’s second largest shark population, though both sightings and attacks on humans are rare.

The last recorded catch of a great white shark was on 17 April 1987, when local fisherman Alfredo Cutajar caught a female said to be 7.13 metres long: making it the largest recorded fish ever landed locally, and only the second largest in the Mediterranean.

The contents of her stomach are said to have included a two-metre dolphin, a two-metre blue shark and a turtle.

The great white shark is mainly known for its size, with mature female individuals growing up to 6.1 metres in length and 1,950 kg in weight. However most are smaller, males measuring 3.35 to 3.96 metres (and females 4.57 to 4.88 metres on average.