SeaQL Lab

SeaQL Lab





TRACKING THE LAST MEDITERRANEAN WHITE SHARKS

  • BOAT international

    Yachts For Science: Sailing superyacht helps with ground-breaking shark research in the Mediterranean

  • Robb Report

    How This 87-Foot Sailing Yacht Is Helping to Protect Endangered White Sharks

  • eDNA

    The team uses environmental DNA (eDNA) to track the white shark's genetic footprint in the Mediterranean Sea

  • Augmentum Foundation

    Augmentum is supporting the White Shark Chase, a multi-annual research program where an international team of researchers is tracking the last White Sharks in the Mediterranean Sea.

Centuries of coastal fishing, and more recently, industrial exploitation have severely impacted this population, which, in the last few decades, has declined to very low levels of abundance. They were historically abundant and widely distributed in the region, and now they are critically endangered. We don’t know how many sharks are left and still know very little about their ecology and biology to protect them. 

Because they are scarce and have no aggregation areas similar to other regions, studying them in the field has always been challenging. To address this challenge, we started a multi-institutional monitoring program on white sharks in the Mediterranean Sea.

Research Team

Francesco Ferretti

Assistant Professor
Virginia Tech

Taylor Chapple

assistant professor
Oregon State University

robbie schallert

research scientist
stanford university

Brendan Shea

phd student
virginia tech

jeremy jenrette

phd student
virginia tech

chiara gambardella

visiting phd student
virginia tech

Stefano Moro

PhD Student, La Sapienza University/Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn

barbara block

professor of marine science
stanford university

austin gallagher

research scientist
beneath the waves

david curnick

Postdoctoral Research Associate
Zoological Society of London

Sara Al Mabruk

Research Scientist in Marine Biology
Lybia

Khaled Echwikhi

professor
university of gabes

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