Sharks in Portugal

Are there sharks in Portugal? Yes. Our Atlantic coast – from the Tagus Estuary out across the Lisbon–Setúbal canyon system and further to the Azores and Madeira – hosts more than 40 species. Most are pelagic (open-ocean) animals that rarely come close to beaches. Encounters with swimmers are uncommon, and the risk to bathers is very low when compared with other coastal hazards.

What matters most is context: who these sharks are, where they roam, how healthy ecosystems attract them, and how current conservation measures protect both wildlife and people.

Quick answer: Are there sharks in Portugal?

Absolutely. Offshore you’ll find blue sharks (Prionace glauca), shortfin makos (Isurus oxyrinchus), smooth hammerheads (Sphyrna zygaena), deep-sea catsharks (Scyliorhinus spp.), and occasional giants like the basking shark (Cetorhinus maximus). SeaEO-Tours crews have even logged calm-sea surface sightings offshore Lisbon near the canyon heads – thrilling, rare moments we always handle with respect.

Seeing a blue shark glide along a slick calm sea reminds you that Lisbon sits beside a living ocean — vast, connected and surprisingly gentle.

Sidónio Paes, CEO and marine biologist at SeaEO-Tours.

Sightings vs. Accidents (last years)

• Sightings: Every summer, media report occasional near-shore shark sightings (often brief and non-threatening), which may lead to a temporary red flag while lifeguards assess conditions. Example: in July 2025, beaches at Foz do Arelho hoisted red flags for a few hours after a shark was seen near the shore; authorities stressed there was no cause for alarm.
• Accidents: The International Shark Attack File (ISAF) confirms that 2024 had 47 unprovoked bites worldwide, the lowest in ~28 years, and Europe’s share is tiny. ISAF is the science standard for these records. Portugal has very few confirmed cases across the historical record, reflecting that our shark fauna is largely offshore and wary of people.

Bottom line: sharks in portugal are mostly not dangerous to humans; near-shore sightings don’t equal attacks, and lifeguard protocols err on the side of caution.

Why Portugal is shark country: the canyon connection

Three major submarine canyons – Cascais–Lisbon, Setúbal, and Nazaré – carve the shelf and act like marine highways, mixing deep, nutrient-rich water with the productive shelf influenced by the Tagus Estuary. This boosts plankton and baitfish, which in turn attract top predators, including sharks and dolphins, especially offshore.

Tagus to Canyon, in a nutshell: the estuary nourishes the shelf; the canyons focus productivity; wide-ranging predators cruise the edges. It’s an elegant, natural conveyor belt that starts right by Lisbon.

Conservation: what protects sharks in Portugal today

The rules that matter (Atlantic & EU)

Shortfin mako (North Atlantic): zero-retention in the EU (2025).

The EU’s 2025 fishing opportunities regulation prohibits retaining, transhipping or landing shortfin mako anywhere in the Atlantic. In practice: if a mako is caught, it must be released – dead or alive – so it doesn’t enter trade.

ICCAT rebuilding plan for mako.

The North Atlantic stock is under a multi-year rebuilding programme (Rec. 21-09), reviewed annually. It caps mortality, tightens reporting, and tasks scientists with mapping nursery and pupping grounds to guide future closures.

Safe handling & release standards.

ICCAT minimum standards set out how to release sharks to maximise survival (gear cutters, de-hookers, keeping fish in the water, avoiding gaffs). A complementary 2024 best-practice guide summarises evidence that circle hooks and careful handling cut at-vessel mortality and improve post-release survival.

Fins-naturally-attached in the EU.

Since 2013, the EU has required sharks to be landed with fins attached, effectively banning finning across European fleets and ports – Portugal included.

CITES trade controls.

Shortfin and longfin mako have been on CITES Appendix II since 2019, so international trade requires permits backed by sustainability findings; this complements ICCAT/EU fishery rules.

Why these protections are needed

Many sharks mature late, grow slowly and have few young – traits that make populations recover slowly after overfishing. That’s why robust management matters even for widespread species like the blue shark (Prionace glauca, Near Threatened on the IUCN Red List) and especially for shortfin mako (Isurus oxyrinchus, Endangered globally).

Portugal’s lens: bycatch, monitoring and science

• Bycatch reality. In the Northeast Atlantic, sharks are mainly taken incidentally on pelagic longlines targeting tuna and swordfish. Observer and logbook data feed into ICCAT stock assessments; the 2025 mako data-prep and assessment reports emphasise improving estimates of discards and survival – key to tracking the rebuild.
• Science in our waters. Portuguese teams (e.g., MARE/University of Lisbon) run projects to map elasmobranchs and reduce impacts, from BRUVs around Berlengas to tagging and hotspot mapping along the shelf and canyons. These studies help identify where sensitive species overlap with fishing effort so managers can act.

Ethical tourism & local codes of conduct

Azores shark-diving code. The Azores have a regional code of conduct for pelagic shark dives (e.g., at Condor Bank), prioritising diver safety and animal welfare (group size limits, provisioning rules, in-water behaviour). Responsible operators brief clients, avoid chasing, and end dives if sharks show stress.

Why it helps. Well-run wildlife tourism can incentivise live sharks by shifting value from extractive uses to observation, while building public support for conservation (see also WWF’s best-practice toolkit for shark-ray tourism).

What readers can do (practical, science-backed)

• Choose operators who follow release and interaction best practice.
• Support data collection – Citizen photos (date/position) of unusual sharks- e.g., basking sharks in spring – can be shared with Portuguese research groups to document seasonal pulses along the Lisbon – Setúbal – Nazaré canyon axis.
• Back science-based rules – Measures like the mako zero-retention and fins-attached policies are crucial stepping stones toward healthier populations in the Atlantic.

Safety cues for swimmers & surfers

1. Beach flags: Portugal’s lifeguards use color flags; red = no swimming, yellow = caution, green = favorable conditions. Some beaches may use a purple flag to indicate potentially hazardous marine life (e.g., jellyfish or, rarely, sharks). Always follow lifeguards and posted signs.
2. If there’s a sighting: leave the water calmly, avoid fishing discards near bathers, and let professionals assess. Temporary closures are preventative, not a sign of increased danger.

Bellow, the scientific illustrator João Tiago Tavares, from Gobius created these biological illustrations for the initiative to promote the importance and beauty of Sharks in Portugal called #WeLikeSharks coordinated by APECE in 2013. Proof is that these amazing illustrations represent the biggest pelagic Sharks occuring in Portugal or spotted in portuguese waters including Madeira and Azores Arquipelagos. In total, there are more than 40 shark species swimming by, and none or very few dangerous shark-attacks. The objective was to dismistify the terror generated during decades of these lovely and pre-historical marine creatures.

Sharks in Portugal and elsewhere are facing enormous threats, mainly due to overfishing, as they are essential to balance the ecosystems (Queiroz et al., 2015 and Queiroz et al., 2019), with detailed explaintions on a extensive scientific research on “Global spatial risk assessment of sharks under the footprint of fisheries”.

Furtunately, it is common on a Dolphin Watching odyssey to encounter Blue-sharks at the surface, specially when the wind is very smooth. In 2020, we spotted more than 5 blue-sharks swimming at the surface, while a colleague spotted a 3m hammer-head shark close to the Lisbon Canyon as shown above. In these boat tours, the chances are low, however with rising water temperatures during summer they occur more frequentely.