Sleeper Shark Washes Ashore on Malcolm Island, BC

Sleeper Shark Washes Ashore

Website Upgrade

If you have found this site a little difficult to navigate, please stand by. We will be changing the layout to include pages and make it much easier to find what you might be looking for.

Thanks for your interest and contributions!

Sincerely,

Tanya and Jenn

World's First Hybrid Shark Found off Australia!

Read article here.

Shark in a Trance

I came across this on Yahoo News and couldn't resist posting it b/c I think it's inspiring that she uses this technique to do good things for sharks. The other story that it links to is sadder.

A diver in the Caribbean balanced a vertical 10-foot shark thanks to her unusual ability to put it into a trance. To create the state, the Italian diver rubs the ampullae of Lorenzini, the name give to hundreds of jelly-filled pores around the animal’s nose and mouth. She has used the technique to remove parasites and fishing hooks caught in shark mouths. It has been a big week in shark moments, after this photo of a Cyclops shark also made the rounds. (Photo: Caters News)

White Shark Evidence off West Vancouver Island

The great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias) is one of the largest and most revered sharks in our waters. In Eastern North Pacific waters white sharks range from Alaska to Mexico, but are most common off the California coast. A very low number of white sharks have been identified in Pacific Canada, a total of 14 were recorded between 1961 and 2004. However, we have received 8 unconfirmed sightings of white sharks in waters off the west coast of Vancouver Island from 2000 to the present day. These white shark sightings were made by fishers and surfers. Sighting descriptions are usually of “smaller” white shark (3 to 4 metres) suggesting juvenile white sharks. Recent satellite tagging research off the California coast suggest that juvenile white sharks spend a lot of their time in nearshore coastal waters, most likely looking for prey.

The only photo evidence we have received to date of white sharks are from injured or dead animals. In 2005, Tanya Dowdall found a Harbour Porpoise (Phocoena phocoena) washed up on MacKenzie beach in Tofino. The bite was later confirmed by the late Aiden Martin from ReefQuest Centre for Shark Research as an inexperienced juvenile white shark bite. In 2008, a local marine mammal biologist, Wendy Szaniszlo, photographed a Stellar Sea Lion (Eumetopias jubatus) with a large bite on a pinniped haulout in Barkley Sound. Ralph S. Collier from the Shark Research Committee confirmed the bite as one made by a white shark. Ralph cited four points that confirmed a white shark attack: 1) location of bite on the sea lion, 2) accompanying individual tooth insertion impressions, 3) perimeter of exposed musculature and accompanying tissue, and 4) “interspaces” between the individual impressions. To ease the minds of local swimmers and surfers there has never been a white shark attack recorded in Pacific Canadian waters.

If you have any past or recent shark sightings in the waters off British Columbia we want to hear from you. Email your sighting details to shark_reports_bc@yahoo.ca