Cage diving with great white sharks coming to Nova Scotia’s South Shore | 24CA News

A brand new business that gives vacationers the possibility to cage dive with nice white sharks off the coast of Nova Scotia goals to mix analysis with the fun of getting up shut and private with one of many planet’s most fascinating fishes.

Atlantic Shark Expeditions will run each day journeys from the marina in Brooklyn, N.S., exterior Liverpool, from Aug. 1 to the tip of October. Customers can pay $395 every to go on the daylong journeys, and may select to view sharks from the boat or from a cage, the place they are going to put on a wetsuit and use a snorkel.

Heading up the operation is Neil Hammerschlag, a marine biologist who has labored with and studied sharks for over 25 years in South Africa, the Galapagos, the Bahamas and Florida.

“I’m really excited,” he says. “I’m hoping Nova Scotians will get behind this and get really excited, be proud of the sharks that we have here. I mean, Nova Scotia is known as Canada’s ocean playground. I really hope people take advantage of that ocean playground.”

Great white sharks are recognized to go to the waters off Nova Scotia, and tagging efforts in current years have introduced extra consideration to their presence.

In addition to serving to vacationers tick an merchandise off their bucket lists, Hammerschlag shall be utilizing the expeditions to analysis how nice whites are influenced by human exercise and local weather change, and to study extra about how their inhabitants is altering over time and what the animals are doing in Nova Scotia.

He plans to tag sharks, construct up an identification database, take biopsies for ecotoxicology research and conduct ultrasounds on the animals as they swim.

“We’re really trying to solve the mysteries of white sharks off of Nova Scotia,” he says. “Globally, they’re endangered and this might be like a remaining stronghold for those animals, so it’s really important to figure out what makes them tick so we can make sure we can protect that to support their recovery.”

Hammerschlag says sightings throughout expeditions are usually not assured, however prospects may have the chance to identify different sea life comparable to seals, fish and birds.

“Part of these expeditions is the adventure of the exploration. It’s not an aquarium. It’s not a zoo. This is the wild, and the wild is completely unpredictable.”

Staff will use bait to lure sharks shut sufficient to the boat to work together with them. Hammerschlag says they won’t use chum — buckets crammed with blood, bone and floor fish — however reasonably bigger items of bait, comparable to tuna heads.

Surfers involved

That thought does not sit properly with some folks.

Walter Flower has surfed the waters off Nova Scotia for greater than 30 years, and has owned the South Shore Surf and Board Shop exterior Lunenburg for about 20 years. He additionally runs a whale-watching business and has labored with shark researchers for the previous few years.

Flower says surfers are involved about the corporate’s plan.

“Having sharks associate food with human presence, you know, you get the vibrations of the boat and the splashing around of people in the water … I don’t think it’s a good thing,” he says.

“As they say, don’t feed the bears. If you don’t want to have problems with them, don’t feed them and they won’t come looking.”

Flower says a whole lot of surfers frequent the waters of the South Shore, and plenty of are questioning how the plan might have an effect on them.

“We are 100 per cent, you know, the most people at risk.… We look like an injured seal out there in the water. You know, on your best day, you’re in a wetsuit and flailing around out there, you know, and splashing.”

Flower’s brother, Bill Flower, is a industrial fisherman with a level in marine biology who makes use of a cage to help documentary producers and shark researchers. 

He shares his brother’s considerations concerning the security of surfers, and in addition worries concerning the security of vacationers, who should be capable of clamber out and in of the cage “with the animals nipping around your ankles.”

“It’s not for the faint of heart,” he says. “It’s safe for professionals like us to do. It’s a calculated risk.… For an inexperienced person to do that, they’re going to be flopping and floundering on the top of the cage. They could have their feet over the side, their legs in the water — probably not a good idea.”

Three miles offshore

Hammerschlag says beachgoers and surfers don’t have anything to fret about.

“We’re not going to be operating anywhere near where there’s anyone in the water,” he says, including that the boats shall be a minimum of three miles (4.8 kilometres) offshore.

He says analysis from South Africa and Australia has proven that cage diving operations — together with those who use bait — do not affect the behaviour of sharks in a big manner.

Fred Whoriskey is the chief director of Ocean Tracking Network, a analysis physique headquartered at Dalhousie University in Halifax which, amongst different issues, research the motion and behavior of sharks.

He says it is necessary to stability the corporate’s operations with the wants of different customers of the ocean, however that stability is feasible to search out. He factors to the multimillion-dollar shark cage diving trade in South Africa that thrives alongside browsing.

If the expedition boats in Nova Scotia are three miles offshore, that distance will decrease interplay with surfers, Whoriskey says.

“There are very few surfers that are going to be three miles off of land. You won’t find any surf break out there,” he says.