Med's last white sharks take shelter in Sicilian Channel

(ANSA) - ROME, OCT 22 - Researchers have found the Mediterranean's last white sharks in the Sicilian Channel.
    The traces of the endangers great predators were found in the area during a number of expeditions led by Francesco Ferretti, an Italian scientist with Virginia Tech University.
    Though they were historically abundant and widely distributed in the region, Mediterranean white sharks have declined to dangerously low abundance levels, impacted by centuries of coastal and, more recently, industrial fishing.
    "We decided to accept the challenge of finding the last white sharks in the Mediterranean," Ferretti said.
    "It wasn't easy".
    The study seeks to be the first step of a conservation program in the Mediterranean to track the last white sharks in the region, estimate their abundance and extinction risk, characterize the species' ecology and inform management and conservation.
    A paper on the study, which also featured contributions from the Università Politecnica delle Marche and Naples' Anton Dohrn Zoological Station, has been published in Frontiers in Marine Science. (ANSA).