A great white shark was seen in the Var near Port-Cros and Porquerolles.
A TF1 team collected the testimony of the fisherman who filmed the predator, very rare in the Mediterranean.
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The 1 p.m.
A fin that sticks out in the distance and slowly approaches. Henri Cavillon still can't believe it. Out fishing that day in the waters of the Port-Cros National Park (Var), he found himself only a few centimeters from a white shark estimated at 4 meters long. “I turned off the engine ( ), the shark saw me quite quickly and approached me very slowly, but really very, very peacefullyhe says in the TF1 news report to be found at the top of this article. And it turned and went under the keel“.
Not enough to impress our amateur fisherman. If he confesses that we feel “a little apprehension“in such a case, the sixty-year-old ensures that we”go over it quickly” : “The meeting is so extraordinary“.
If Henri kept his cool, for some walkers, coming across such a specimen would be frightening. “Since we saw the film Jaws with the shark, I think we keep this fear unconsciously“, underlines a woman in front of our camera. “A white shark isn't mean on purpose, as far as I know. It's surprising“, said another.
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A great white shark photographed by a fisherman in the Var, an extremely rare event in the Mediterranean
Surprising, but above all extremely rare. The white shark is a species classified as critically endangered. “This is good news for ecosystems because it shows that these predators are presentcomments to TF1 Sandrine Ruitton, teacher-researcher at the Mediterranean Institute of Oceanology. But be careful, they are still very rare. Observations show that we are below the normal populations of these large predators“. The population of white sharks is in sharp decline in the Mediterranean. The number of sightings has fallen by at least 45% in recent years.
