'We never expected to see a shark there, it was probably one of the most terrifying experiences of my life'
Author of the article: Abigael Lynch, Special to National Post
Publishing date: Jan 01, 2022 •
Nearly five decades after Jaws, great white sharks continue to have a hold on our psyches.
PHOTO BY GETTY IMAGES / STOCK
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On a sunny, unseasonably warm Tuesday in November, Chris Harvey-Clark donned a wetsuit and slipped into Halifax Harbour, near where it ends and the open Atlantic Ocean begins.
He and a friend were at the wreck of HMHS Letitia, a hospital ship that ran aground in 1917. The duo planned to tag torpedo rays — an electrified but minor sea nuisance.
Instead, they came across the most fearsome predator in the North Atlantic, the stuff of blockbuster movies and a million nightmares: a great white shark.
“We never expected to see a shark there, it was probably one of the most terrifying experiences of my life,” said Harvey-Clark, director of animal care and professor of shark biology at Dalhousie University.
The water was colder than what sharks usually favour, and the nearest colony of seals — sharks’ favoured meal — was a kilometre away.
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On a sunny, unseasonably warm Tuesday in November, Chris Harvey-Clark donned a wetsuit and slipped into Halifax Harbour, near where it ends and the open Atlantic Ocean begins.
He and a friend were at the wreck of HMHS Letitia, a hospital ship that ran aground in 1917. The duo planned to tag torpedo rays — an electrified but minor sea nuisance.
Instead, they came across the most fearsome predator in the North Atlantic, the stuff of blockbuster movies and a million nightmares: a great white shark.
“We never expected to see a shark there, it was probably one of the most terrifying experiences of my life,” said Harvey-Clark, director of animal care and professor of shark biology at Dalhousie University.
The water was colder than what sharks usually favour, and the nearest colony of seals — sharks’ favoured meal — was a kilometre away.
And yet there it was.As soon as I saw the tail disappear, I knew it was a great white
“We went down, and the water was really murky so we couldn’t see much. As we were just deciding to head back to the boat, I looked up and saw this huge tail disappearing just out of sight in the murky water, maybe 30 feet away.”
“As soon as I saw the tail disappear, I knew it was a great white. I tried to get my buddy’s attention, but he was looking in the opposite direction. I started banging on my tank to get his attention when the shark passed by again, my buddy still didn’t hear.”
“It was on that pass I got a good look at the animal. It was a 10-foot-long untagged female. It just kind of cruised along slowly and looked at me, then disappeared again. When it came back for a third pass, my buddy saw it, and we both couldn’t believe our eyes. We both couldn’t believe what we had seen and how close the shark had gotten. I gave him the signal and we took off for the boat. Both of us knew that this was not a safe situation.”
For Nova Scotians, such sightings are becoming a kind of new normal. Sharks aren’t everywhere, but it suddenly seems they could be, due to historically high seal populations, the Gulf Stream, conservation efforts — and the Twitter feed of a shark named Hilton that was tagged and tracked to Nova Scotia by researchers.
Hilton – one of over 100 sharks tagged by scientists at American non-profit OCEARCH — takes a charming tone for his 46,000 followers. OCEARCH sees social media as a fun way to raise awareness about sharks, as well as work to educate the public about them.
But great whites maintain their menace.
On Aug. 13, 2021, Taylor Boudreau-Deveaux, 21, went swimming with friends off a boat about a half-mile west of Margaree Island off Cape Breton when she was bitten by a shark . She was rushed to surgery in Halifax with serious injuries to her legs and thighs. Family members have told reporters she is recovering but Boudreau-Deveaux did not respond to interview requests.
“I followed the story of Taylor’s attack very closely, I even reached out to the investigating officer of the RCMP to try and get in touch with her,” Harvey-Clark said. “The place where Taylor and her friends were swimming was by a deep-water site, a drop off, and there was a nearby island with seals on it. Sharks can be found in that kind of an area.”
It was the first reported shark attack on a human in Nova Scotia since a woman was knocked overboard in 1891.
Frederick Whoriskey, the executive director of the Ocean Tracking Network at Dalhousie University, said shark attacks are rare — he estimates there were three attacks in the U.S. the last 10 years, under similar conditions to Boudreau-Deveaux.
“It’s tended to be people that are swimming in the offshore areas, isolated on their own around seals. It’s not like the sharks are actively developing the taste for and are attacking people preferentially. If they were, we wouldn’t be talking about three attacks every 10 years.”
“There were conservation efforts to bring the great white shark back from the brink of extinction decades ago, so most of the great whites we see now are in their sub-adolescent phase, where they are feeding on fish and around 10 feet long. As they get bigger and more powerful, they begin to move on to larger, more energetic prey like seals. As adolescents they have to figure out what makes good prey and what doesn’t, so they begin experimenting. If one comes across a swimmer, it looks like good prey to the adolescent shark, so they will take a test bite. As more of the population comes into this phase, there is a chance that we will see more bites occurring,” Whoriskey explained.
If one comes across a swimmer, it looks like good prey to the adolescent shark, so they will take a test bite
As well, Whoriskey said oceans are warming, causing more people to go into the water and for later in the year. And the anti-sealing movement has shrunk the East Coast seal hunt and led to historically high levels of grey seal and harbour seal populations.
“I think the estimate is 20,000 or 30,000 grey seals, although depending on who you talk to, some say it is 200,000 seals; either way it is far above what it was 33 years ago,” Harvey-Clark said.
Harvey-Clark agrees with Whoriskey in that there will be an increase in shark interactions, but with a different theory.
“The whole reason they’re coming north is food and their main food source is seals. So as long as Canada’s got historically high seal populations specifically on the east coast, and as long as we have white sharks being conserved and not actively fished, I think we will see an increasing trend of spotting white sharks up here, and probably sooner or later, we may see an impact on seal populations as well,” he said.
Christine Murphy, an owner of the Tuna Blue Inn in Hubbards, N.S., hasn’t changed her relationship with the water, but her husband has, and it’s due to Boudreau-Deveaux’s attack.
Their inn overlooks the picturesque Hubbards Harbour, near one of Nova Scotia’s most popular swimming beaches, Hubbards beach.
“I am a regular swimmer in the ocean, my entire life I have been swimming and I never thought about sharks. The attack in August shows us that they are around, but it hasn’t changed my routine. I still jump off the boat and go swimming, but my husband won’t. He will religiously check the tracking sites and he will go out on the boat with us, but he is terrified to jump into the water,” Murphy says.
A great white shark swimming just under the surface.
PHOTO BY STOCK IMAGE
Although Murphy has never seen a shark in her 55 years of swimming, she says there is now an interest around town about sharks where there wasn’t previously. “People go out on their boat and go fishing and they are always talking about how seeing a shark would be great, but they never see one, some tourists even come into the area in the hopes of seeing one. There is more interest than fear I would say.”
Tagged sharks visit that stretch of Nova Scotia’s south shore fairly often, according to OCEARCH’s shark trackers. Its website allows for visitors to see where in the world the tagged sharks are, as well as where they have been in the past 24 hours, including the distance they have travelled.
“There are definitely people who don’t go swimming in the ocean as much as they used to and won’t go as far out, or they will stick to the beaches where they didn’t before,” Murphy says.
Whoriskey, though, said it is important to keep perspective.
We are talking about an average of about 60 attacks a year. Compare that to the 500 crocodile attacks every year across the globe and the 120 people killed by falling coconuts a year
“We are talking about an average of about 60 attacks a year. Compare that to the 500 crocodile attacks every year across the globe and the 120 people killed by falling coconuts a year. Some kind of perspective is needed to understand the nature of what this actually is.”
He likens the ocean to a forest wilderness: We are never alone in there.
“We know that when we are walking into a national park, quite often, we know there are very large, potentially dangerous animals in there, like wolves and bears and coyotes. And we don’t not go into the national parks and go for a hike. What we do is we begin to take the measures … these animals are living by the rules that they live by and they’re powerful and they’re predators. And you need to be careful. So, the education component of what we want to do now and to try to get those messages out to people to remember that this is stepping into the wilderness, and there are predators in the ocean.”
Harvey-Clark doesn’t disagree, but said he has surfer friends who avoid specific areas because they are aware sharks are present. None have ever been attacked, but nearly five decades after Jaws, great white sharks continue to have a hold on our psyches.
Most especially, those of us who’ve encountered them.
“It felt like the longest five minutes of my life,” Harvey-Clark says of his sighting last month.
Although Murphy has never seen a shark in her 55 years of swimming, she says there is now an interest around town about sharks where there wasn’t previously. “People go out on their boat and go fishing and they are always talking about how seeing a shark would be great, but they never see one, some tourists even come into the area in the hopes of seeing one. There is more interest than fear I would say.”
Tagged sharks visit that stretch of Nova Scotia’s south shore fairly often, according to OCEARCH’s shark trackers. Its website allows for visitors to see where in the world the tagged sharks are, as well as where they have been in the past 24 hours, including the distance they have travelled.
“There are definitely people who don’t go swimming in the ocean as much as they used to and won’t go as far out, or they will stick to the beaches where they didn’t before,” Murphy says.
Whoriskey, though, said it is important to keep perspective.
We are talking about an average of about 60 attacks a year. Compare that to the 500 crocodile attacks every year across the globe and the 120 people killed by falling coconuts a year
“We are talking about an average of about 60 attacks a year. Compare that to the 500 crocodile attacks every year across the globe and the 120 people killed by falling coconuts a year. Some kind of perspective is needed to understand the nature of what this actually is.”
He likens the ocean to a forest wilderness: We are never alone in there.
“We know that when we are walking into a national park, quite often, we know there are very large, potentially dangerous animals in there, like wolves and bears and coyotes. And we don’t not go into the national parks and go for a hike. What we do is we begin to take the measures … these animals are living by the rules that they live by and they’re powerful and they’re predators. And you need to be careful. So, the education component of what we want to do now and to try to get those messages out to people to remember that this is stepping into the wilderness, and there are predators in the ocean.”
Harvey-Clark doesn’t disagree, but said he has surfer friends who avoid specific areas because they are aware sharks are present. None have ever been attacked, but nearly five decades after Jaws, great white sharks continue to have a hold on our psyches.
Most especially, those of us who’ve encountered them.
“It felt like the longest five minutes of my life,” Harvey-Clark says of his sighting last month.
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