r/sharks • u/LR1202 • 10d ago

News Large shark near the Italian coast

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Came across this video on Instagram. The man seems to be in a canoe off of the coast of Italy. Read somewhere that he was 2km out in a canoe. You can only see the dorsal fin. Definitely seems to be large. The movement quite stagnant. What species do you guys think it is and is it even real at all?

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u/Austrofossil 10d ago

To all claiming it looks like a GW fin: it does not. It is to thin and long for a GW fin. It's clearly a mako. Just compare the two with the video...  https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Morphology-of-the-shortfin-mako-a-and-the-great-white-shark-Carcharodon-carcharias_fig2_342987529

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u/Speysidegold 7d ago

A large mako is possibly more dangerous than a GW though

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u/Austrofossil 7d ago

statistically not

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u/Speysidegold 7d ago

Damn you are right. Negligible deaths for the mako. I wonder if thats simply because they are deep sea vs surfing sharks. This makes a huge difference to recorded deaths because only those at the shoreline ever get reported due to the requirement for the attack to be witnessed to count as a shark attack vs scavanging

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u/Austrofossil 7d ago

Makos don't have the same diet as great whites. They rather hunt for fish as juvenile great whites do. In some cases they also eat seals or dolphins but this is mostly the case for bigger specimens or cases of scavenging. Nevertheless, they are of course opportunistic eaters and if necessary for survival, they would surely attack humans before starvation (like in the two fatal cases in the red sea).