Drone photo of a great white shark near Green Bay, Nova Scotia, on July 4.Alex de Saint Sardos/Supplied
The number of white sharks seen prowling the water near popular beaches and coastal areas in Eastern Canada is expected to rise, and so too should people’s awareness about the risks of an encounter with this apex predator, some scientists say.
Over the past several years, there has been a dramatic increase in sightings of white sharks near the shorelines of Atlantic Canada, from smaller juveniles to massive 20-footers. White sharks, an endangered species that is not known for targeting humans despite its Hollywood-driven reputation, regularly migrate here, from May to November, travelling in and around the region to feast on grey seals – a population that has exploded in recent years.
In the past few weeks alone in southern Nova Scotia, a popular beach was cleared by a lifeguard after a possible sighting of a white shark, a boater encountered at least one white shark over two days near that same beach, and there was a report of several white sharks feeding on a humpback whale carcass.
While it is very rare for humans to encounter a white shark, with most marine biologists emphasizing that the risk they pose remains quite low despite the rising buzz about them, there have been a number of unprecedented incidents in recent years.
Last year, a white shark fatally attacked a duck hunter’s dog as well as a deer swimming between two islands in southern Nova Scotia. Two dead white sharks also washed up on beaches in Cape Breton and Prince Edward Island. And in 2021, a young woman was bitten by a white shark off western Cape Breton.
Stills from the documentary, Great White North, which documents the population in Nova Scotia.Tell Tale Productions Inc./Supplied
Chris Harvey-Clark, a Dalhousie University veterinarian and white shark researcher, documented seven encounters with divers over the past three years, including a face-to-face meeting himself in Halifax Harbour. He also identified 22 white sharks by their distinctive black and white Holstein-type markings and tagged one new individual, between 2020 and 2023 in southern Nova Scotia, during the filming of Discovery’s new documentary Great White North.
“We’re all on the learning curve up here,” Dr. Harvey-Clark said. “Canada is just not used to having large marine predators close to shore. We’re not Australia or South Africa so it’s a whole different climate here. People are actually very positive about the presence of white sharks – they’re an apex predator and indicate we have a healthy environment – but at the same time people fear the unknown.”
There are no data on exactly how many white sharks are swimming in East Coast waters. But conservation efforts in the 1990s have led to increased sightings in the northwest Atlantic over the past decade.
No plan to remove carcass of beached Nova Scotia whale that travelled up a river
The best information the Department of Fisheries and Oceans has is from a 2023 study that estimates up to 257 tagged white sharks head through Cape Cod into Canadian waters, in addition to others tagged in South Carolina.
DFO spokeswoman Christine Lyons said white sharks have been historically challenging to study given their relatively low abundance, highly migratory behaviour, and the logistical challenges of research in marine environments.
“Research on population trends is ongoing in Canada and results will be shared as soon as they are available,” she said.
The great white shark boom means people need to become more shark aware, similar to how people are now attentive to the presence of coyotes and bears in national parks, adjusting their behaviour to lower the risk, said Dr. Harvey-Clark, who has created a shark safety video.
Frederick Whoriskey, a marine biologist and executive director of the Ocean Tracking Network at Dalhousie University, says signs like this one at Sandhills Beach in Scituate, Mass. can help keep swimmers informed.Frederick Whoriskey/Supplied
“It pays to be well informed but I don’t think there’s a lot of reason to panic,” he said, adding that a person is more likely to be struck by lightning than bit by a shark. “But things have changed a little bit.”
“People are now aware that we’re sharing the environment in a more intimate way than we used to with this particular species so you just have to exercise good judgment.”
It’s best to avoid swimming in the ocean at dawn or dusk, and in areas where there is a steep drop-off on the ocean floor. He said he cautions people to stay out of the water where there are seals, and to keep an eye out for for odd seal behaviour, such as hanging out in the surf breakup or in shallow water near the beach.
Shark awareness information is provided at some beaches in Nova Scotia. This summer, the Nova Scotia Lifeguard Service included information about the potential presence of white sharks on QR codes posted on sandwich boards at some beaches, said Frederick Whoriskey, a Dalhousie marine biologist and executive director of the Ocean Tracking Network.
His idea for the signage, he said, traces back to a similar effort in Cape Cod after white sharks flocked to the heavily seal-populated area in the 2000s, and after the death of a man in a 2018 shark attack. (A woman swimming off her own property was also fatally attacked by a white shark in Maine in 2020.)
“There is a most probably vanishingly small probability of you ever having an encounter or interaction with them,” Dr. Whoriskey said.
“All of the media buzz around the sharks is potentially creating a sense of much greater danger than exists at present.”
Steve Crawford, a University of Guelph biology professor who studies sharks, said Indigenous and local expert knowledge holders have him convinced that the northwest Atlantic white shark population is likely to grow to levels that few Atlantic Canadians expect.
He believes the region needs greater public-safety measures to manage the rare risk of an increasing number of white sharks near popular beaches and coastal areas, with visible signage and emergency tourniquet kits at supervised and unsupervised beaches, as in Maine and Massachusetts.
“Atlantic Canadians, their families and their out-of-province visitors, deserve everything we can do to make them responsibly aware of the white sharks without creating panic,” Dr. Crawford said in an e-mail.
“In my opinion, for federal, provincial [and] municipal governments to knowingly decide not to provide these public awareness signs and emergency kits at Atlantic Canada beaches is misguided at best, and negligent at worst. Atlantic Canadians deserve, and hopefully will soon demand better.”
Nova Scotia Lifesaving Society special projects director Paul D’Eon said extra measures aren’t necessary. He said there hasn’t been a shark attack at any of their provincial park beaches, which have been visited by 20 million people in 52 years.
“So until such time it becomes a risk then it’s going to be a no,” he said.
Parks Canada has no plans to include such measures within the beaches in PEI National Park, including its Greenwich Beach area, where a dead juvenile white shark washed up last August, according to spokesperson Robyn Caissie. “Parks Canada is aware that sharks can be a cause for concern and would like to reassure visitors that the likelihood of a shark encounter is low,” she said in a statement.
She said surf guards on PEI National Park beaches use the international beach safety warning system, which allows them to raise a purple flag to advise of the presence of marine animals, usually porpoises, jellyfish and seals, and swimming areas may be temporarily cleared when a seal is present.
In New Brunswick, where white sharks have been sighted in recent years and a dead white shark washed up onshore in Pointe-Sapin in 2022, spokeswoman Heather Pert said that if white sharks are regularly showing up, then lifeguards and parks staff would receive additional training.