Residents of Gaspé received a rare visit from a juvenile great white shark named Jekyll on Tuesday morning, location data from Ocearch shows.
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The juvenile shark has been roaming the Gulf of Saint Lawrence for a few days and approached Gaspé and Chandler on Tuesday morning, as we note on the website of the NGO that tracks more than 430 great white sharks.
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Jekyll has been tracked by Ocearch since December 2022, weighs 180 kilos (395 pounds) and is 2.68 meters (8.8 feet) tall. The organization named it Jekyll because it was found off the island of the same name in the state of Georgia.
An adult male great white shark averages 6.5 meters (21 feet) in length and can weigh up to 2,000 kg (4,409 pounds).
But Jekyll didn’t arrive alone in the Gulf of St. Lawrence on July 14. His pal Simon’s chip, also a juvenile specimen measuring 2.9 meters (9.6 feet) in length and weighing 197 kilograms (434 pounds), was discovered near Anticosti island on Sunday.
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The great white shark Simon was last sighted off the island of Anticosti.
According to information from Radio-Canada, two great white sharks, Maple and Tancook, were also sighted a few weeks apart last summer near the Magdalen Islands and off Grande-Rivière.
Not extraordinary
While the occurrence of sharks in Quebec is unknown, it is not exceptional.
No fewer than seven species live in the waters of the St. Lawrence River, including basking sharks, bowhead sharks – which can live up to 400 years – and blue sharks.
“You find [dans les eaux du Saint-Laurent] a habitat that allows them to meet their needs for food, reproduction and even shelter,” Lyne Morissette, a researcher at the St. Lawrence Shark Observatory, said in an interview with 24 Hours.
“If we take great white sharks for example, they’re not new here, especially because we find a lot of seals, their favorite food, especially around the Magdalen Islands.”
However, spotting them like whales is difficult if not impossible. Unlike marine mammals, sharks don’t have lungs, so they don’t need to breathe on the surface. They usually stay low.