When asked a couple of weeks ago to reveal his summer plans, Francesco Ferretti divulged that he intended to spend nearly three weeks on the Mediterranean Sea.
But the assistant professor in Virginia Tech’s College of Natural Resources and Environment wasn’t going to be working on his tan or sampling the region’s finest wines. On the contrary, he had something much more adventurous on his itinerary.
Ferretti, a faculty member in the Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation, is the lead investigator and scientific director of an unprecedented expedition to study great white sharks in the Sicilian Channel, a relatively small waterway between Sicily and the coast of Tunisia.
The primary goal of the expedition? To place a tag on an animal that weighs on average between 1 and 2 tons, features approximately 300 serrated bladelike teeth, and swims at speeds up to 35 miles per hour.
Ferretti notes that no Mediterranean great white shark has ever been tagged, so if successful, he expects to celebrate in a big way.
“I may swim back across the Atlantic,” he said, laughing.
This expedition came about largely because of a $52,000 grant from The Explorers Club Discovery Expedition grant program. The Explorers Club partners with Discovery Inc. to allot grant money to scientists and researchers who conduct projects that reveal new knowledge about the planet and its inhabitants, including regions undergoing environmental or cultural change.
Crew members from the Discovery Channel are joining Ferretti’s team to film footage for a potential documentary, provided the expedition ends in success.
“This is an unprecedented expedition to detect, film, and, for the first time, tag Mediterranean white sharks,” Ferretti said. “This is one of the most endangered and least known white shark populations globally that we would like to know better to promote effective conservation and recovery programs.”
Ferretti left the U.S. on June 5 to spend 19 days in the Mediterranean with his team headquartered in Marsala, Sicily, a small coastal town on the western end of the island. His colleagues are a team of eight scientists from Beneath the Waves, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting ocean health.
In addition, four graduate and research assistants are part of the expedition, which is using cutting-edge technology to compile data about the Mediterranean population of great white sharks currently considered by many researchers to be endangered.
Count Ferretti among that group. He has been studying sharks since his days as an undergraduate student at Polytechnic University of Marche in his native Italy. Specifically, in relation to the great white population, he and his team have looked at historical and statistical data for shark sightings and catches in the Mediterranean.
That analysis revealed a population in decline. Ferretti believes that these sharks are unfortunate victims that get caught in the nets of commercial and local fishermen in search of other species of fish.
“From that analysis, we could demonstrate that white sharks have been declining quite substantially in past decades mainly because of industrial fishing, but also because of a lot of coastal fishing,” Ferretti said. “The Mediterranean is one of the most exploited regions on the planet. There are a lot of people, there is a lot of fishing, and because of humans’ impacts on habitat and fish populations, many shark populations are in decline, particularly the white shark.”
The extinction of this population of great white sharks could be devastating to the Mediterranean ecosystem. The removal of an apex predator like the great white shark could create a top-down effect throughout the food chain, resulting in the decline or even extinction of other species.
“It’s very exciting, fun, and very important,” Ferretti said. “Lots of people will be looking to see what we can do, also because they understand the challenge. This is a high-stakes and high-risk expedition.”
Written by Jimmy Robertson
