Guests aboard a Nova Scotia whale-watching tour boat got to see more than they probably anticipated when they witnessed a great white shark eating a floating whale carcass.
The great white was spotted last Tuesday in the Bay of Fundy about two miles offshore from Freeport, N.S.
Amanda Crocker, the first mate on MV Georgie Porgie with Freeport Whale & Seabird Tours, says she had never had an encounter quite like this in her 30 years on the job.
“I was in shock for that half second. I’m thinking, ‘Am I really seeing what I think I’m seeing?’” she recalled.
“I’ve never seen a great white shark before in the wild. I’ve only ever seen pictures and videos and things like that. So it was really exciting to get to see this.”
The tour company had first heard about a whale carcass floating in the bay the day earlier. Crocker explains that the news in itself was sad, because the whales that visit the area are ones they’ve come to know.
“It’s a sad thing to know that one of the whales of our population has passed away because the same whales come to our area every year for feeding and it’s the same ones every year,” she said.
“But when we went out there on Tuesday and we seen the whale, we decided to take a little bit closer look to see if we could see anything around it that might be feeding on it.”
She describes how the shark was “aggressively” feeding on the carcass, and that the people on the boat were able to take photos and videos of the rare encounter while being about 40 to 50 feet away.
“To see this with our own eyes was amazing. We don’t often see shark(s) out there at all. Sharks don’t have to come to the surface to breathe,” she said.
“We have nothing enticing on the boat to to bring them to us. We’re not actively fishing or anything out there, so it’s very rare that we get to see many shark to begin with, let alone a sight like this.”
Shark sightings and close encounters
Several shark sightings and encounters have made headlines this summer in the province.
In August, a great white shark took a bite out of a stand-up paddle boarder’s board off Cherry Chill Beach on the South Shore.
“I was like eye-level with its eye, cause I was in the water … Its big, deep, unblinking eye, just kind of staring back,” Kent Walsh told Global News last month as he described hitting the animal with his paddle.
“Because of the floatation of the board, its whole dorsal fin was out of the water, everything was just like all right there.”
Marine veterinarian Chris Harvey-Clark analyzed the bite mark and confirmed the shark was a great white — likely a juvenile.
“The sea is not teeming with sharks that are dying to eat you. Most of these I think are accidents and the surfboard is a classic accident,” he said.
“Don’t stop using the sea, but exercise situational awareness when you’re out there.”
For Crocker, who goes on about 150 whale watching trips each summer as a tour guide, she knows to be cautious about sharks.
“I know that they’re there. I firsthand seen that the sharks are definitely around, especially in August,” she said.
“August is shark month and that’s when the most of these guys are hanging around and I don’t go in the water.”
— With files from Jake Webb, Jacquelyn LeBel and Ella MacDonald