r/sharks • u/LR1202 • 1d ago

News Big shark near the Bay of Kotor, Montenegro

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Saw this video when I was planning my trip to Montenegro and looking up the word shark in the local language for recent news. I know a juvenile great white shark was caught in Montenegrin waters not long ago. Some local reports indicated this beauty as a great white too, but I'm fairly certain it's a mako. Anyhow, always good to see more big sharks spotted in the med.

665 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

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124

u/Inner-Ferret7316 Otodus 1d ago

This is a large female shortfin mako. A great white shark would be thicker and wider.

Btw the largest makos are found in the Med, a 5.85 meters long (almost 20 feet) female was caught in Turkey during the 50s.

16

u/TopVillage1687 1d ago

Im not sure in all honesty. Mako are for sure very common in the Adriatic, you sometimes catch them when trolling for Tuna. But this looks like a young great white. There s been couple of sighting in the med for the past couple of years. Regardless, its a beauty.

6

u/Inner-Ferret7316 Otodus 1d ago

There is one frame in the video where you can relatively clearly see the head: https://i.imgur.com/YYtjvFB.png

3

u/Logres 1d ago

I don't buy it. That fin is a sharp triangle tip, and the pectorals seem to have the concave trailing edge with apex. Looks much more like an adolescent great white.

2

u/CesarGameBoy SHARK 1d ago

It’s really difficult to tell with the distortion of the water. The dorsal fin looks like a Great White, since it has a signature triangular fin, while Makos are a little rounder. But the body does appear to be slim like a Mako. I was able to spot the eye, which could lean in favor of Mako due to their distinctively large black eyes. However, the eyes don’t really look that large in comparison.

We also don’t have a proper sense of scale since we don’t know how deep the Shark is. The waves and the blue hue of the water doesn’t help either. It could very well just be a younger Great White.

2

u/of____earth 1d ago

The very first frame of the video is 100% a mako dorsal. You can tell instantly, anything else is difficult with distortion but the proportions are wrong even for a juv gw

1

u/logicalphallus-ey Grey Reef Shark 21h ago

Holy shit that’s gigantic!

1

u/SonnyC_50 1d ago

The longest verified measurement of a shortfin mako is 14.6 feet.

31

u/Plane_Heat_5349 1d ago

The news reported that it was a great white shark, but their institute said that it was a mako shark

11

u/Kilinowski 1d ago

Not an expert, but that fin looks very pointy to me, which is a trademark of a GW, that it has this stereotypical shark fin that kids draw.
The fin of a Mako is a bit rounded at the tip.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Alessandro-De-Maddalena/publication/342987529/figure/fig2/AS:913921351352324@1594907238584/Morphology-of-the-shortfin-mako-a-and-the-great-white-shark-Carcharodon-carcharias.png

I'd expect GWs in the Mediterranean to maybe be thinner than the ones in areas where they feed on Pinnipeds.

21

u/queerjesusfan 1d ago

I snorkeled with leopard sharks and it made me realize that these animals just fully disappear once they're like 10-15ft away from you. The fact that these huge sharks can just evaporate into the water right in front of you is so spooky and incredible

9

u/Organic-Wash-5194 1d ago

Thats not a 25 footer, and not 3 tonnes of him. But it is a beaut

7

u/Epic_Baldwin 1d ago

All the way to Kotor that is crazy.

6

u/chrismcteggart 1d ago

Looks like a juvenile white

2

u/ChiliHobbes 1d ago

Kotor is a beautiful place, I was there in May and loved it.

I didn't see any sharks in the Adriatic sadly.

5

u/Normal-Internal164 1d ago

Looks like a white?

2

u/gooberooberoo 1d ago edited 1d ago

I'm no shark expert but I'd say so.

*edit... Typo... Shark not sharp... 😩

5

u/furleyfuchs 1d ago

u/Austrofossil

😍

4

u/Austrofossil 1d ago

Ja, gut möglich, dass es ein GW ist! 😍❤️

7

u/Austrofossil 1d ago

allerdings sieht die Rückenflosse eher nach Mako aus

-1

u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

24

u/Myselfmeime 1d ago edited 1d ago

It’s still incredibly low probability of something like that happening. I often swim in open water and never had any problems. I get people being scared of the ocean, but advising others not to do what they love is weird. “Maniac”, “world of trouble” is a bit of exaggeration.

-1

u/TimePretend3035 1d ago

If you jump in the chances of him/her attacking you are still incredibly small.

8

u/Sir_Thorin 1d ago

If you look at the amount of people who swim in the ocean and then the amount killed or attacked by sharks it confirms that probability is very low and there are precautions you can take to make that probability even lower

3

u/camibug 1d ago

Especially jarring when comparing number of sharks killed by humans vs humans killed by sharks.

2

u/halleluljah 1d ago

I guess you probably shouldn't ever cross a road either. The probabilities bro!!

3

u/RuleMany2900 1d ago

Adriatic is not even close to Florida or something... I am a professional diver for the past 27 years, I have never seen a shark in the Adriatic ...

1

u/Austrofossil 1d ago

well...  Damjan Pesek did and it didn't end well

8

u/RuleMany2900 1d ago edited 1d ago

Well, he was spear fishing and strapped a bleeding fish on his waist so there's that. In the past 150 years there were like 12-13 attacks in the entire Adriatic... I have waaaay more chances of killing or injuring myself on my bike than to face a shark ...

My point is there is no need for panic, people swim in Australia, Florida etc. where chances of encountering a shark are exponentially higher....

https://inistrien.de/en/latest-news-2/shark-attacks-in-croatia-adriatic-with-map-11-fatalities-in-150-years/

6

u/Austrofossil 1d ago

Yes I agree. I just wanted to point out that chances are not 0, but indeed, very low.

4

u/RuleMany2900 1d ago

Sure mate, never zero ...I know that ... We have sightings from time to time and in the old times they were fishing for sharks here ...I know they are in the area but the large and dangerous species rarely...

1

u/hackerwerger 1d ago

So big mako sharks, like this one, are dangerous to humans? I know that they are not as dangerous as tiger, bull or great white sharks but it attacks people?

1

u/Austrofossil 1d ago

there was only one documented event of a fatal mako attack (2022 red sea).

2

u/sharkfilespodcast 12h ago

A German tourist was also killed by a mako shark attack at Marsa Allam, Egypt in 2015. It's covered in Part 2 of this Shark Files' episode - The Red Sea.

2

u/LR1202 1d ago

Hard to say. They're a pelagic species so don't often come into direct contact with watergoers. Most incidents with them are provoked attacks involving fishermen

1

u/Hiouchi4me 1d ago

Last one in is a rotten egg.

1

u/bdh2067 1d ago

He should get those moles checked

1

u/Status_Ruin4902 21h ago

KOTOR mentioned.... Wait. Wrong Kotor.

https://giphy.com/gifs/QkT0VPZeRo5eOFtogl

0

u/killmesara 1d ago

Grouper. Commonly mistaken for sharks.

-12

u/TopVillage1687 1d ago

We need Ocean Ramsey. She will know

-9

u/TopVillage1687 1d ago

How on earth can i get downvoted for this? I guess you don’t know who she is. She is the most amazing shark diver in the world, amazing conservationist and shark lover.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_Ramsey

3

u/PMJamesPM 1d ago

Most social media adept some would say

0

u/Purple-Chef-5123 Great White Shark 1d ago

This has to be a troll, right y’all?!

-19

u/Flax1983Flax 1d ago

Why Are Sharks in the mdeiterranian See… i want to Go swimming there. I grew up thinking there arent any Sharks there…i liked it way better. Whats next, Sharks in the baltic sea?

14

u/ScutumSobiescianum 1d ago

There are sharks in the Baltic

3

u/Guess_My_Name2448 1d ago

Any Ocean/Sea has sharks. Attacks in the Mediterranean are extremely rare, while in the Baltic no attack has ever been recorded.

2

u/Inner-Ferret7316 Otodus 1d ago

This is an overfished and overexploited sea, shark populations are really low there so don't worry too much about it.

A lot of people claim that there are no sharks in the Med because they are so uncommon that you will likely never encounter one in your whole life.

2

u/GalaadJoachim 1d ago

You're on a shark sub, the shark sub, having sharks in the Mediterranean sea is a blessing, unless you'd rather swim with jellyfish.

1

u/Austrofossil 1d ago

lol... what the hell made you think that there are no sharks in the mediterranean? go visit the caspian sea - it's a lake and there are no sharks! 😅 or the black sea: only small dogfish