hello I’m Matt Galloway and this is the current podcast you ever been eye to eye with a great white shark Andrew Jones [Music] has oh my good he’s hook he just bit us wow the teacher from Grand Manan New Brunswick was out fishing in the Bay of funy last summer when a great white started circling his boat it was huge and that dorsal fin and it circled our boat uh maybe six or seven times each time each time the shark would come around the boat you would look it right in the eye it was so close but we we had eye contact uh several times well I I I wasn’t scared and maybe I’m not smart enough to be scared but my my crew and he told me three times that it was time time to go we better we better get moving maybe I’m not smart enough to be scared uh there is evidence that there is a growing number of great white sharks on Canada’s East Coast so much so that there’s a plan in Nova Scotia to put warning signs up at the beaches Fred warsky is executive director of the ocean tracking Network at delous University in Halifax also working with the life-saving Society of Nova Scotia to determine which beaches need those signs Fred good morning good morning you heard Andrew there he had a moment eye contact with that great white shark why are there more great white sharks off the east coast of this country the population of White was originally depressed probably due to fishing mortalities and it wasn’t because they were being fished themselves but because they got caught as by catch in other Fisheries so by the 1960s they were looking pretty much like an endangered species and conserv conservation measures were put into place the populations have begun to resurge in the last 20 years or so and now we’re seeing the fruits of that recovery do we know from a numbers perspective how many more great whites there would be in Canadian Waters the only estimate we have for the Northwest Atlantic comes from some fantastic work done by the Atlantic white shark conservancy and the state of Massachusetts division of marine fisheries that managed to get an estimate of how many of these animals were cruising Cape Cod and came up with a about 800 figure they’re now working on trying to extend that to the whole Northwest Atlantic which would include our Canadian population our sharks don’t stay here all year they migrate up for the summer feeding season and they turn around and go back somewhere warm for the winter we heard and Jones there and uh person that he was in the boat with saying we better get out of here it’s time to get a move on um you could imagine that people want to do that because of of the danger of of these sharks there have been reports in Nova kosa of two shark attacks in recent years one injured a woman who is out swimming in 2021 another killed a dog last year so how much of a risk do these sharks pose to humans and to dogs so these are big powerful animals think things like bears and cougars and coyotes in in our wild terrestrial environment and you want to treat him with respect you also remember the fact that we are guests in the ocean whereas that’s home for them and so they kind of rule out there at this point the sharks are really not considered to be that big a danger part of it is because their numbers are still pretty low and part of it is because we’re not a preferred prey item if we were then you would see a whole lot more mortalities due to shark attacks than we are actually seeing and typically it’s been about 10 to 20 globally worldwide due to that and you compare that to the hundreds of thousands of people that are killed by mosquitoes because of the mosquito born diseases that are out there kind of puts things in perspective and yet I mean Jaws looms large in the minds of many people why might a shark attack a human being um we think that part of the game right now is that as this population is recovering we’re picking up a lot of what are called subadults and juvenile sharks there’s a big change that occurs in the white sharks when they move from being a juvenile that’s feeding on fish to something that moves over to a larger size range of prey taking seals their teeth actually change from things that are more like needles that are pointy for spearing fish into something that’s triangular and serated that is great for uh kind of like a steak knife for cutting into a larger prey item and in that phase where they’re making the transition when they’re learning what a seal is and and how to go hunt seal they begin experimenting and we think that some of the high risk comes from the the fact that our populations right now are dominated by those juveniles in that range where they’re going to be experimenting where are you looking at putting these warning signs well we’re working with groups like the life-saving society which you mentioned in municipalities here um we don’t as an academic institution consider ourselves the right group to determine what is best for Public Safety that is really the experience and the competencies of the municipalities and things like the lifeguards and so what we’re going to do is support them and they’ll make decisions about where the signs are going to go which beaches where when and we’re going to provide material to them what would be on the signs wherever they happen to be so if you go back to the onogen of the signs they started in Cape Cod where a offshoot of the Sable Island graay seal population colonized chattam area on the cape and then that population built to 14,000 in the roughly about 2000 and at that point the Sharks came into a heavily used touristic area called CAP and you began to have interactions with people including one fatal attack so at that point the municipalities on the cape began putting up in some cases some very aggressive signs to warn people that there’s a danger here and you should be cautious and here are measures that you can take to do that but if you move away from the cape to other areas where sharks occur but they don’t have the same risk because we have not had the fatalities the signs are more signs about Beach safety so they talk about rip tide and currents and things like that but also sharks a little bit so on these signs as I understand there’s just going to be a QR code that’s going to direct people to more information right so the plan right now at least what we’ve been discussing is to put out the uh the daily sign that the lifeguards put out in the beaches and take back with them at night um there has been a sign survival issue in some places for example as the price of lumber goes up to $125 per plywood sheet a plywood sign makes a great shed for somebody if you’re nobody’s looking when you you serve yourself at night so by by having these kind of temporary small signs out there the best solution is to to just have a QR code there and you scan it and it’ll take you to the life saving services safety page and there there will be information about Beach safety generally and that’s going to give people more information than an image of you know the giant shark with what did you say the Stak knife teeth yes steak Knife well serated serated sure but that so you think that the QR code would be enough it’s it’s going to be a start really this game is about getting information out to the public and just let them know that the ocean is changing we’re seeing the return of something that used to be here now we got a lot more people doing a lot more things like uh kaying and paddle boarding and many many more Surfers than we had back when the populations were historically large so we’re moving into a new time and a new series of interactions we just want people to be aware and there are things you can do to manage a risk so we just have a minute or so left I mean you have heat wave that is in Nova Scotia over the next few days these beaches are some of my favorite places in in this entire country um you could imagine that somebody might be scared to go for a swim or a surf off the Atlantic right now what would you say to them yeah I go every day to Crystal Crescent Beach during the summer so I’m managing my RIS by not swimming at dawn and Dusk and I don’t hang around with the seals don’t hang around with the seals right keep your distance from the uh from the buffet I suppose Fred good to talk to you thank you very much thank you very much Fred riski is executive director of the ocean tracking Network at delous University in Halifax
More great white sharks are appearing off Canada’s East Coast. The Current hears why that’s a win for conservation — and what it means for humans heading down to the beach.
#shark #eastcoast #nature
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