Watch: ‘It Looked Very Much Like A Great White’ – Large Shark Gets Into Bait Fight With Fishermen Off Malta’s Southern Coast

A large shark which might very well have been a great white was spotted some nine kilometres off the southern coast of Malta yesterday evening… and even ended up in a fight with fishermen that lasted about five whole minutes. “While we were fishing for false albacore on a charter boat, one of the tourist clients spotted a shark behind us,” Justin Meli told Lovin Malta. “We had a 15-kilo false albacore tuna hanging alongside the boat and maybe it came for that and two tuna rods with baits in the water.” “The shark suddenly dived and went straight for one of the rods baited with mackerel,” Meli continued. “It took the bait and made a powerful run. After about a five-minute fight, it bit through the 150-pound leader and got away.” While only a couple of shots of the shark’s fin managed to be captured, Meli did record the moment the shark fought the fishermen for the bait. “The shark looked very big, roughly half the length of our 25-foot charter boat,” he added. “From our perspective, it looked very much like a great white shark.” View this post on Instagram A post shared by Lovin Malta (@lovinmalta) “I’ve been on boats my whole life and I’ve never seen a shark this big, it’s always only been blue sharks,” Meli continued. “I slightly panicked at first because I wanted to make sure I don’t hurt him, but he was very fast and quickly went down for the bait. He didn’t even give me a chance to film him!” This isn’t the first video of a shark being spotted in Malta’s waters in recent days – earlier this morning, Facebook page Is-Sajjied shared a short video of another one filmed off the southern coast of Malta, right by the fish farms. Meli was actually tagged in that video by friends who thought it might be the same shark, but according to him, it looked “too small” in comparison. Have you ever spotted a shark in Maltese waters? •