WATCH: 'Shark' sighting off Costa Blanca beach most likely to be tuna

Twitter / @shanksy03

IT'S BEHIND YOU!: The shark in the shallows off Benidorm's Levante beach

SWIMMERS quickly left the sea  as a two-metre-long  fish was spotted  off a Costa Blanca beach in the Spanish holiday hotspot of Benidorm.

A video (scroll down to watch it) posted on social media shows the big fish close to the shore of the popular Levante beach.

Twitter user MIcky (@shanksy03) wrote, “Never seen so many people get out of the water so quick in my life.”

A marine biologist told the Euro Weekly News that he believed the fish was a tuna, with the double dorsal fin being the giveaway.

However, sharks are not uncommon in Spain with regular sightings along the Mediterranian coastline.

Elisenda Mateus Valls, a shark expert and biologist at the Institut de Ciencies del Mar (Marine Sciences Instiutute) in Barcelona said  there are plenty of the marine predators inhabiting local waters, although you’re extremely unlikely to see one.

“There are at least 47 species of shark inhabiting the Mediterranean Sea,” said Valls. 

“These include some of the most iconic predators, including the great white, the great hammerhead, long and short fin makos, thresher, basking, black and whitetips, blue and bronze whaler sharks.

“Fifteen are considered dangerous or potentially dangerous, and 16 measure three metres or more in length as adults, but encounters between humans and sharks in the region are extremely rare.”

Only around 60 cases of interactions between humans and sharks in the Mediterranean have been recorded since 1899, while the last major attack in Spain happened in March 1986 in Tarifa, just outside the Mediterranean, when a white shark attacked a surfer, causing non-fatal injuries.

Related stories:

• British girl bitten by small shark on Spanish beach
• Sad ending for shark that caused alarm on Mallorca beaches
• Are there sharks in the Med?

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Comments


    • Glen Folkard

      15 September 2017 • 21:56

      Pfft sharks don’t exist there is only ONE left and its needs food so TURN around and get back out there.

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