While the presence of great white sharks in the Gulf of St. Lawrence worries some swimmers, shark-spotting on the Atlantic coast is nothing new.
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These marine predators have been roaming our waters for “several decades,” according to a researcher of pinniped ecology and prey-predator relationships.
“It’s something we’ve been watching for a number of years and we think there may be a trend (upward). These are hypotheses that we are testing,” explained Xavier Bordeleau on LCN on Thursday morning.
Operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week, this surveillance technology has registered nearly fifty movements of the species made famous by the movie Jaws.
“Last summer we spotted up to 47 different great white sharks in the Gulf,” says Xavier Bordeleau, according to which the size of the specimens varied between 2.5 and 5 meters.
In particular, the north migration of the great white shark, also known as Carcharodon carcharias, is not a new phenomenon, as the shark species has a history of swimming in the North Atlantic, feeding on a variety of prey such as the gray seal.
AFP
In fact, the many reports in the Gulf of St. Lawrence are likely related to global warming.
“The fact that the water is warming could contribute to an upward trend, but there is not necessarily a scientific consensus,” explains Xavier Bordeleau.
“These are research directions that we are testing, especially because the monitoring effort has increased significantly in recent years and the tagging effort is also constantly increasing.”
Xavier Bordeleau doesn’t know the likelihood of a swimmer or kayaker encountering one of these predators, but he reassures those who fear such a scenario.
Acoustic stations near the beaches of the Îles-de-la-Madeleine offer “little detection”.
“There are a lot more discoveries around the isolated islands, about ten or twenty kilometers from the beaches,” he says. We’re seeing them appear more frequently where there’s more loot.
Recall that residents of Gaspé spotted a juvenile great white shark named Jekyl on Tuesday morning, according to location data from the organization Ocearch.
Watch the interview with Xavier Bordeleau in the main video.