Are There Really Great White Sharks in Croatian Waters?

With a possible weekend of diving in Croatia on the cards, I wanted to know something specific: are there actually great white sharks in the Adriatic? The honest answer is yes — but the real story is a lot more interesting, and less alarming, than that sentence makes it sound.

The Adriatic used to be a great white hotspot

The eastern Adriatic — the Croatian side — has a genuine history with great white sharks. Between 1872 and 1882 alone, 21 great whites were caught in the region, back when the Austrian maritime authorities were actually offering bounties for sharks. One of the largest great white sharks ever recorded, a nearly 18-foot (about 5.5-metre) female nicknamed “Carlotta,” was landed off the coast of Croatia in 1906. She’s still preserved today at the Natural History Museum of Trieste, and is considered the largest taxidermied great white shark in the world.

A nursery, not just a hunting ground

Scientists think the eastern Adriatic may have historically functioned as a nursery area for great whites — somewhere young sharks were born and spent their early years, rather than just somewhere adults passed through. That matters, because it means the sharks weren’t just visiting; this stretch of coast may have been genuinely important to the species’ life cycle.

Then the population collapsed

Great white numbers in the Mediterranean have declined enormously since the mid-20th century — one study found a 61 percent drop since then, and some researchers believe the real decline over the last century is over 90 percent. Confirmed sightings became rare enough that a 2011 record stood for years as one of the last reliable ones.

But they haven’t disappeared entirely

Since then, a small number of confirmed young great whites have turned up in exactly the area I’d be near. A juvenile was caught by fishermen near Rogoznica, Croatia, in 2023, and confirmed by international experts through photographs showing its pectoral-fin markings, dorsal-fin shape, and other identifying features. Similar young-of-year individuals were documented off Croatia in 2018 and off Montenegro in 2025. Scientists think this could mean the eastern Adriatic is still functioning as a nursery area today, though that’s not confirmed yet.

So should I actually be worried?

No. Across the entire Mediterranean, only around 20 confirmed great white shark attacks on humans have ever been recorded, spread mostly across Italy, Greece, Malta, France and Spain — and none of those records point to Croatia specifically. Encounters are described by researchers as “extremely rare,” and the population is small enough that most of what scientists know comes from the very occasional specimen caught by fishermen, not from divers actually seeing one.

Why I still think this is worth knowing

It would be easy to either panic about this or write it off completely, and both would miss the actual story. The eastern Adriatic isn’t a place with regular shark encounters — it’s a place with a genuinely important, badly depleted population of one of the ocean’s most recognisable predators, in the exact area I might be diving. Knowing that doesn’t change my plans. It just means I’d rather understand what’s actually out there than either be scared of it or pretend it isn’t.

Questions & Answers

References

1. National Geographic. Diver captures rare footage of great white shark—in the Mediterranean.
2. Croatia Week (2023). International experts confirm Great White Shark identification in Croatian Adriatic.
3. Soldo, A. et al. New Evidence for the Contemporary Presence of Juvenile White Sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) in the Adriatic Sea.