Malta's Infamous Great White Shark

Every couple of months, a video clip claiming to show the story of Malta's Great White Shark  starts to make the rounds again on some of the social media networks.  The clip says that 3 fishermen fought, caught and killed the biggest Great White in the world!

The Story of Malta's Great White has had many doubts about the events and the true length of the shark. Here are the facts.

17 April 1987 = Alfred Cutajar finds a dead Great White Shark on one of the set lines belonging to Vince D'amato. He tries to pull it up but it was too heavy for his small boat. He asks for help from a larger fishing boat that was passing nearby. They pull up the shark and slowly tow it in to Żurrieq valley, but when they got there, they found out that the crane could not get close to the water to lift up the Shark so it was towed again all the way to the village of Marsaxlokk.​

Malta's Great White Shark

Word spread around like wild fire and John Abela enters the picture. He immediately offers to buy the Jaws from Alfred, and to make reports internationally about the catch. The Shark was taken away and on the next morning, the local Maltese paper "In-Nazzjon Taghna" published a report of the catch with an estimate of 18 ft (5.4m) for the shark.

"In-Nazzjon Taghna" article.

In the meantime John Abela claimed that he had measured the Shark at 23ft 5in (7.13m) !! He also published a whole set of photos, but none of which showed the actual full length of the shark. These measurements were considered doubtful by many researchers. When gutted, the remains of a 2m Blue Shark, a Dolphin and a Turtle were found.​

In 1998 a team from BBC, came to Malta to investigate this issue. Some unpublished photos were discovered at the offices of the "In-Nazzjon Taghna", the paper that had first reported the catch, along with the First photo. The BBC investigators then sent these photos for tests and later,
Ian Fergusson {1998} stated that the results indicated an estimate of app. 18ft. (5.4m). BBC contacted Abela with these findings and after a lot of arguing with them, he then admitted that he might have taken wrong measurements.

It is worth noting that on his Facebook page, John Abela now claims that the shark was 6.4m (20.9ft.)

My own personal opinion......

I personally arrived on the scene as the Shark was being hoisted out of the water in Marsaxlokk, but could only get to within 5 mtrs of the shark. From that distance, I estimated the shark to be less then 20 ft. (6m).​

At that stage I did not know any of the people involved, but later I managed to trace both Alfred Cutajar and John Abela. I have spoken with them on many occasions, especially Alfred. I have also seen the Jaws and the Pectoral fins of this shark, and in my personal opinion, I still believe that it was no bigger 20ft. (6m). Although not the biggest in the world, it is one of the largest ever caught.

Here are the "Missing" Photos