A great white shark was spotted on Wednesday off the coast of the southern Sicilian island of Lampedusa.
The small specimen was seen 25 kilometres from the island's coastline by a group of marine biologists engaged in dolphin research.
The excited researchers were able to photograph the shark.
One of the biologists told ANSA: "We were in our dinghy some 25 kilometres from the coast when we saw a fin emerge from the water. "We got closer and realised that it was a small shark. We took some photos and after studying them, we realised that it was a great white."
The biologists stressed that great whites were increasingly rare in the Mediterranean Sea, where they are listed as an endangered species.
Although regarded as a 'man-eater', a reputation helped along by the 1975 blockbuster movie Jaws, the great white rarely attacks human beings. Over the last century, there have been some 25 confirmed unprovoked attacks by white sharks in the Mediterranean.
The last fatal attack in Italian waters was in 1989, when a scuba diver was killed by a great white near Piombino on the Tuscan coast.
