A shark hunting for mackerel has been causing a stir in Liverpool Nova Scotia.
Witnesses say the roughly 1.5-metre shark swam under a popular harbour bridge and into the estuary, grabbing mackerel right off their lines, along with their bait.
“Everybody was just hollering ‘shark! shark!” says fisherman Frank Gardner.
Gardner has seen sharks in deeper waters, but never this close. He believes it was a blue shark.
“We’ve seen the fin coming up through the bridge,” says Gardner. “It went up the river, then it went under, and that was the last we saw of it. It was about a five-footer.”
“My suspicion is that this could be either a blue or a porbeagle shark,” says DFO shark technician Warren Joyce.
Joyce believes the water temperature and steady supply of mackerel is luring the shark into the popular swimming area.
“Every summer, we usually get quite a few shark sightings,” says Joyce. “Maybe like half a dozen, to a dozen sightings.”
Joyce says there are upwards of 19 different species of sharks in Nova Scotian waters, mostly found in the Bay of Fundy.
“It’s a little out of the ordinary,” says Joyce. “We’ve certainly had reports of sharks coming into bays and harbours in the past, and they do come in quite close to shore, but I’ve never heard of one coming in quite that close to a bay or habour.”
Some have said like the seals, the shark took fish right off their lines. People in Liverpool hope that’s the only thing it takes a bite out of.
With files from CTV Atlantic’s Matt Woodman
