Record water temperatures in the North Sea could see great white sharks returning to British waters, scientists have suggested. Last year, average surface temperatures reached 11.6C, the highest since records began in 1969, attracting increasing numbers of seals and dolphins.
Researchers from the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences examined whale fossils from North Sea sediments dating back around five million years, when waters were warmer. The fossils showed tooth fragments embedded in whale skulls, indicating sharks had preyed on them.
Published in Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, the study identified one tooth as belonging to a bluntnose sixgill shark, common in the Mediterranean today, and the other to an extinct mako shark, a relative of the modern great white. The findings offer clues to how ecosystems may shift as climate change warms our seas.
While the present North Sea is too shallow for whales, the increasing numbers of dolphins and seals could attract large predators like great whites back to UK waters, the scientists postulate.
