Great white takes a bite out of tuna caught by fishermen
TIGNISH, P.E.I. — Alden Gaudet was heading back to port on Sept. 8 after a day on the water fishing for tuna north of Macleod’s Ledge near Tignish, P.E.I.
Gaudet and his father, Wayne, were towing an Atlantic bluefin tuna they had caught earlier behind their boat when suddenly something unexpected happened.
“The boat started slowing down, we didn’t know what was going on,” said Gaudet. “I looked back, and a great white (shark) burst out of the water with the back half of the tuna in his mouth.”
Panicked, the fishermen sped their boat up to try to save their catch, said Gaudet.
“We were trying to get a look to see if the tuna was still there,” he said. “We were pulling the rope, and that’s when the shark came back and hit the tuna a second time. We didn’t even want to put our hands over the side of the boat.”
Eventually, the pair was able to get the catch landed safely inside the boat, but immediately the fishermen knew it was heavily damaged. Gaudet said he estimated the tuna would have been worth around $5,000 before the attack, but with a chunk missing and multiple wounds, it’s hard to say how much they had lost.
Seeing sharks while fishing isn’t new to Gaudet, but this attack was surprising and unusual.
“This is my first time seeing an actual great white,” he said. “We’ve seen thin sharks, we’ve seen blue sharks, we’ve caught and released them. This shark was so big, we thought it was a baby basking shark and didn’t think anything of it. It must have been close to 18 feet long.”
Shark sightings have increased recently. A swimmer in Cape Breton was left with serious injuries after being attacked by a shark near Margaree Island, and a shark sighting shut down P.E.I.’S Basin Head Provincial Park beach for a few hours late in August.
Bob Heuter, chief scientist with U.s.-based marine research organization, Ocearch, said while these incidents could leave some afraid, seeing more great white activity could mean their numbers are growing once again.
“This species is considered to be an endangered species in Canadian waters,” he said in a video interview with The Guardian on Sept. 1.
“There have been very few sightings historically and very few interactions, but when we started our work in Nova Scotia in 2018, we discovered sharks are definitely there and are probably slowly increasing their numbers over time.”
Heuter said great white populations began to nosedive in the 1950s, ’60s and into the ’90s but have begun to recover largely due to conservation efforts.
The increased activity in the late summer months is likely due to the sharks looking for food, which can bring them closer to shore and into areas where people fish or swim, said Heuter.
“They are not looking for us, we aren’t on their menu essentially, but in those rare instances where a swimmer either looks or acts like a suitable prey, or is in the way, that is when people get bit,” he said.
“If you are in the water, try to think like a shark. You don’t want to put out the kind of signals that will make a shark think you are a seal. Try to stay calm, chances are the animal is likely not going to bother you.”
Heuter said researchers thought the Gulf of St. Lawrence wasn’t a popular area for sharks, but recent tracking shows they tend to spend a lot of time in the area, likely due to being filled with schools of fish, seals and the occasional dead whale.
However, Gaudet said there was an unusual lack of seals on Wednesday, which he believes prompted the shark to go after any opportunities it could find to eat.
“We actually caught another tuna about two hours earlier, we were fighting it for about 10 minutes when something hit the line and snapped it right off,” he said.
“We think he got a couple other tuna out there, too. He’s a big shark, he’s probably pretty hungry.”