Sharks gone walkabout – how Australian great whites ended up in the Mediterranean

In the 18th century, Europe started sending boatloads of white settlers to Australia. But unbeknownst to these colonists, Australia had sent its own white contingent to set up colonies in Europe, around 450,000 years earlier. These migrants were sharks - great white sharks. When Chrysoula Gubili from the University of Aberdeen compared the DNA of white sharks from around the world, she found a big surprise. The great white is the most genetically diverse shark studied so far but the Mediterranean fish are only distantly related to nearby populations in the North-West Atlantic, or even in South Africa. Their closest kin actually live half a world away in the Indo-Pacific waters of Australia and New Zealand. Great whites have been recorded throughout the Mediterranean, mostly around the coast of Italy. After vague reports during the 19^th century, the first proper sighting came when a female was caught off the coast ...