Downloaded from YTS.MX
NEWSCASTER: Shock and horror in a picturesque part
of western Cape Breton tonight.
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
NARRATOR: August 2021
and Canada is rocked by news of a shark attack.
NEWSCASTER: A 21-year-old woman from Cape Breton
was airlifted to hospital after an apparent shark attack.
NARRATOR: It's the first confirmed shark bite
in Canadian waters in over 150 years.
And just the latest in a number of mysterious shark sightings
being reported right across Canada's Eastern Seaboard.
MAN: Oh, no!
NARRATOR: Is the Atlantic's most formidable hunter
heading north?
♪ ♪
GREG SKOMAL: Have you ever been here before?
MEGAN WINTON: To Nova Scotia? No, no, you?
GREG: No. Never been here.
♪ ♪
NARRATOR: It's winter in Cape Breton,
and the shark behind the attack has long since departed.
GREG: This is pretty cool up here, huh?
MEGAN: I mean, it's the dead of winter here right now,
it looks like.
I feel like I'm at the North Pole.
NARRATOR: Now, shark experts Megan Winton and Greg Skomal
comb the coastline looking for clues.
GREG: Unprovoked attacks on humans
are extremely rare events,
and in particular this far north, almost unheard of.
There's really just a handful of species
that come here in the summertime.
You know, you've got the basking shark,
it eats plankton, you know.
Forget that, right?
You got porbeagles, which tend to be much smaller,
very rarely, if ever, implicated in attacks on people.
You got blue sharks.
Yeah, they're relatively abundant in the summertime,
but still they're not a dangerous shark.
So in my mind, it really just leaves one culprit,
and that's the, that's the great white shark.
NARRATOR: White sharks have traditionally been seen
as rare visitors to Canadian waters.
Up until 2006, there had been just 32 recorded sightings.
But in recent years, there have been more and more reports
of white sharks heading north.
GREG: What are these white sharks doing here?
What's drawing them this far north?
Those are the kinds of questions we're trying to answer.
NARRATOR: Greg and Megan's goal is to put a camera tag
on a white shark in Canadian waters for the very first time.
If they can tag one, they may be able to learn
why more sharks appear to be moving north.
♪ ♪
MEGAN: Oh.
GREG: Man, this is wild out here.
It's deep water between us and that island.
NARRATOR: Off the island of Margaree,
Megan uses a drone to survey the attack site.
MEGAN: Oh, wow, look at that.
Just beyond the snow, there's a bunch of seals. You see 'em?
GREG: Yeah.
Look at those, gray seals, right?
MEGAN: I think so, yeah. Look at 'em.
Big slobs, little pockets of them.
GREG: Yeah.
MEGAN: A lot of them.
It's crazy deep, dark water.
GREG: Yeah, it looks like it drops right off,
right at the shoreline there.
MEGAN: Perfect place for them to hunt.
The seals wouldn't see 'em coming at all here.
NARRATOR: Ambush hunters,
white sharks like to surprise their prey.
Hanging in the deep,
their gray backs blend into the background,
making them difficult for seals to spot from the surface.
Their eyes are highly sensitive
to contrasts between light and dark.
Seals or swimmers silhouetted against the surface
would stand out in vivid relief.
♪ ♪
GREG: I can't say with 100% certainty that this is,
you know, an incident created by a white shark,
but I'm, I'm very confident that it was.
It's just a lot of evidence.
There's plenty of seals here.
The habitat is ideal for white sharks.
We've got an eyewitness account. They saw a dark fin.
You know, as far as I'm concerned,
this was a white shark attack.
And because it made a bad decision,
it's likely it was a juvenile shark, an inexperienced shark.
NARRATOR: Megan and Greg now believe they know
what type of shark was responsible
for the Canadian attack.
But there are no signs of white sharks to tag
in this near-freezing water.
Every year, white sharks undertake huge migrations
in the North Atlantic.
It's February, and at this time of year,
the relatively warm waters of South Carolina
are a favorite winter destination.
To catch up with the sharks,
Greg and Megan are nearly 1,500 miles south
in the town of Hilton Head.
MEGAN: It's nice to be warm.
GREG: Yeah. This is sweet.
Well, I'm psyched to get out on the water here.
NARRATOR: Greg and Megan's mission here
is to catch and tag as many sharks as they can find
and follow them north.
The data could point them to where the white sharks
are traveling to in Canada and why.
To help find them...
MEGAN: Hey, Chip! GREG: Hey, Chip.
NARRATOR: ...Greg and Megan team up with Chip Michalove,
who's been tagging sharks
for Greg's Atlantic white shark study for the last six years.
GREG: Good to see you.
NARRATOR: Chip leads the team 60 miles offshore
where the continental shelf slips away
to depths of over 300 feet.
♪ ♪
The deep water here is the perfect place
for white sharks to ambush prey like dolphins.
♪ ♪
But the depth makes it difficult to tag.
The only way to lure one up is using a baited hook.
GREG: What the hell happens when we hook up?
CHIP: Oh, my gosh, the adrenaline rush,
through the roof.
I'll tell you one thing, you sleep really good that night.
MEGAN: Oh, my gosh.
GREG: Well, I want to sleep really good tonight,
which means I really want to get one of these fish.
CHIP: Yeah.
NARRATOR: As Chip prepares a white shark favorite
of tuna heads, Megan readies two tags.
MEGAN: So this is an acoustic transmitter.
This is a tag that will ping every minute or so.
And whenever a shark swims past an acoustic receiver,
which line the whole coast of the US and Canadian Atlantic,
we'll get a date and timestamp of when that shark was there.
NARRATOR: The second device is a satellite tag.
MEGAN: This logs light level information, temperature,
and depth data for a year.
And so we'll use this tag to figure out
the broad scale movements of that animal
over the course of the year.
So together, this packs a huge punch.
NARRATOR: All they need now is a shark.
♪ ♪
MEGAN: The dorsal just...
GREG: Oh, yeah, see the dorsal? Dorsal's up.
CHIP: You guys ready for this? GREG: Where is it? Where is it?
MEGAN: It's right, right here.
CHIP: Right behind the boat, right here.
MEGAN: Oh, my god, this is amazing.
NARRATOR: Drawing a white shark in is one thing,
but will it take the bait?
MEGAN: They're coming in, coming in, coming in towards the bait.
GREG: Coming to the bait. Coming to the bait.
Ooh, shaking his head.
Shaking his head.
I've reeled in a lot of big fish in my life,
big tunas, couple of marlin.
And this, this is different.
Feels like I'm trying to stop a truck.
Oh, look at that fish.
Wow.
That's no small fish.
MEGAN: Yeah. Yeah.
CHIP: Alright. Meg, off you go.
GREG: Oh, my god. MEGAN: I can't--
CHIP: Game on! Game on!
GREG: You can do it, Meg.
MEGAN: Oh, my god.
NARRATOR: At nine feet long, it's a juvenile female.
A perfect candidate for Megan's tag.
CHIP: Yeah! GREG: Yes!
CHIP: Yeah ha ha! Nice! Nice work! Yeah!
NARRATOR: Tag on, the shark they've named Reese
is the 283rd individual to join the biggest study
of white sharks in the Atlantic.
While her satellite tag will detach in a year's time,
the small acoustic pinger will continue to track her movements
for another 10 years.
Where Reese heads in the coming months will help Greg and Megan
build a unique picture of the movements
of Atlantic white sharks,
and if shark Reese has a preference for Canada.
♪ ♪
Over the next few weeks, Chip tags seven more white sharks,
bringing the total number of Carolina sharks
tagged this winter to eight.
Over the next three months, all eight head north.
A network of thousands
of listening stations
log the signal from their tags.
As the sharks move north, they head towards cooler water.
White sharks are the members of an elite family
of five shark species known as the lamnids.
♪ ♪
While most sharks are cold-blooded,
lamnids have evolved the ability to keep their bodies
warmer than the surrounding water.
They can capture the heat they generate as they swim
and keep it in their bodies
through specialized blood vessels.
It's a superpower that allows them to thrive in waters
off limits to most of their cold-blooded cousins.
♪ ♪
By June, sharks Josiah and Barnacle Ben
reach Cape Cod, Massachusetts,
the white shark capital of the Atlantic.
♪ ♪
Every year, hundreds of white sharks gather
to feed on the huge seal colonies
that pepper the coastline here.
(seals barking)
GREG: Seals are constantly coming and going, you know,
but estimates have been anywhere up to 50,000 seals
in that region during the summertime.
So it makes sense that a lot of white sharks
will come to Cape Cod.
NARRATOR: Greg has spent the last decade
studying great whites in these waters.
He's discovered they like to hunt close to shore
in water as shallow as a few feet.
SPOTTER: Hey, John, I got one down here,
north end of Monomoy, I'm circling now.
NARRATOR: Tagging sharks is much easier here.
The water is so shallow, Greg uses eyes in the sky
to spot the sharks from the air.
There's no need for a hook.
SPOTTER: So, it's 10:30 and a boat and a half,
you'll probably see 'em.
GREG: He's on the port side.
CHIP: Alright, let's get ready here.
GREG: Yeah! CHIP: Yeah!
GREG: That's how it's done!
NARRATOR: By the end of July, 12 more sharks are tagged,
bringing the total in the Atlantic white shark database
to 560.
But despite the almost limitless
amount of seals on offer,
several tagged sharks choose to leave the Cape and head north.
♪ ♪
They're soon joined by shark Reese
and her fellow South Carolina
sharks Pavel, Sicklefin,
and Eddie, who bypassed
Cape Cod altogether
on their way up towards
the Canadian border.
♪ ♪
To find out what's drawing them to Canada,
Greg and Megan follow the sharks back over the border.
Their mission remains to find a white shark
and deploy the first-ever camera tag
on the back of one in Canadian waters.
GREG: Canada's gonna be a lot different
from what Megan and I are used to.
You know, we go to Cape Cod.
It's a fairly small area, shallow water,
lots of white sharks.
Up here, much different.
You know, lots of space.
Finding them is gonna be pretty tricky.
NARRATOR: Their first destination
is the southern tip of the Nova Scotian Peninsula.
Some 300 miles south of the suspected white shark attack.
Last year over 20 different white sharks were detected
on the listening stations in the area.
And local fishermen also report
an increase in sightings here.
ONLOOKER: Oh, no!
(seals barking)
HEATHER BOWLBY: Welcome to Nova Scotia!
GREG: Finally. A little chilly.
HEATHER: How was the drive up?
NARRATOR: At the small harbor of Wedgeport,
Greg and Megan meet Canadian shark experts
Heather Bowlby and Warren Joyce.
GREG: Awesome, awesome. You got a spot for us to go?
WARREN JOYCE: I think so, yeah. GREG: Let's give it a shot.
WARREN: Yeah. HEATHER: Yeah.
NARRATOR: Heather and Warren have been investigating
Canadian white shark sightings for over five years.
HEATHER: We're really excited that Greg and Megan
were able to come up this year.
We only know snippets about white sharks in Canada.
We're still trying to work out why they're here,
what they're doing while they're here,
and the places that they frequent.
So it's an open field.
There's, there's a lot to answer.
NARRATOR: As they head out,
Warren and the skipper, Eric Jacquard,
decide where to start their hunt.
ERIC JACQUARD: We've had reports on sightings
the last couple weeks,
and then we've seen, actually seen the fish,
Saturday and Sunday here... WARREN: Right.
ERIC: ...ourselves, so, so they're around.
WARREN: They're around. Okay.
Well, let's hope we, let's hope we get one today.
ERIC: That's right. Copy, copy.
♪ ♪
We've all seen great whites in the area.
One of our friends was traveling from, from the island to home,
and, uh, he did, he did see an actual seal bit in half.
And then another friend of ours,
he actually seen the shark throw the seal up in the air.
There's been a lot of interesting sightings,
seems to be more and more common these last few years.
Seems to be a growing, a growing concern.
NARRATOR: Five miles from harbor,
Megan preps a brand new kit
that could reveal why white sharks are here.
MEGAN: So this is my favorite shark spy tool at the moment.
This tag is outfitted with a bunch of different sensors
that will tell us exactly how the shark is moving
and navigating its environment 20 times a second,
which is absolutely
an incredible amount of information.
The best part about this tag, though, what I love about it,
is it has a camera in it that allows us to see what the shark
is doing the whole time it's on the animal.
It's gonna be a real game-changer for us
in terms of figuring out how they use Canadian waters.
NARRATOR: To attach the new tag,
they need to get within 10 feet of the shark.
But first, they have the huge challenge of drawing one in.
There's been less than 100 confirmed sightings
in Canada since records began.
To tempt a white shark close,
the team depends on baited lines.
White sharks have one of the most sensitive noses
in the ocean.
It's thought 14% of their brains
are dedicated to processing smells.
Will any pick up the scent?
NARRATOR: 2:00 PM,
and the oils leaching off the three buoyed bait lines
now create a slick several miles long.
GREG: The water's super deep.
We can't use a spotter plane to find them,
because the sharks get down a few feet and we can't see 'em.
So in order to get 'em, we got to entice 'em.
Get 'em in tight so we can tag 'em.
NARRATOR: Minutes turns into hours,
and there's still no movements on the buoys.
Then, eight hours into the operation...
WARREN: Whoa, whoa, whoa, we got something!
MEGAN: Which one's it on?
WARREN: Number two, number two.
NARRATOR: A white shark takes the bait.
MEGAN: Yup, there it goes!
Shark right in the middle!
GREG: There it goes, there it goes. There it goes.
Okay. Alright.
NARRATOR: To find a white shark on their first day is huge.
Heather and Warren have only ever tagged
one white shark a year in Canada.
GREG: Bottom of the ninth. Two outs.
MEGAN: This is how we roll.
NARRATOR: They now need to pull in the bait lines
to get the shark close enough to tag.
MEGAN: Okay, bring it, bring it in a little bit.
NARRATOR: Unlike in South Carolina,
there's no hook, just the bait to keep the shark interested.
GREG: You're teasing him right up.
MEGAN: Near three.
Now let him come back.
GREG: Alright. MEGAN: Tie off.
Keep coming, keep coming! He's interested.
So let's see if he'll come for two of the close ones.
GREG: Look at that. See him up there?
Yup. He's off here.
MEGAN: Yeah, yeah, there goes!
Diving.
GREG: Get ready for an ambush. There he goes. There he goes.
He, he came right back. Look at that.
MEGAN: He's coming, he's coming!
♪ ♪
NARRATOR: But after one last look at the bait,
the white shark moves off into the deep.
♪ ♪
GREG: Pretty sneaky little critter there.
So, I mean, the good news is
there's, there's white sharks here.
The bad news is we can't get 'em close enough to tag.
But we hope that changes.
NARRATOR: Heading back to shore,
the team review the footage
from cameras mounted on the bait lines.
MEGAN: Chh chh chh chh chh.
Oh, that's such a good one!
HEATHER: So that's when the buoy went down. You on to that, Meg?
GREG: Look at that.
MEGAN: Oh, it really wanted that thing. This is awesome.
GREG: Oh, it tears it up.
NARRATOR: With no claspers visible,
the shark is a juvenile female
and new to the Atlantic white shark database.
MEGAN: I think we put this one at like nine. Right?
HEATHER: I've, yeah, I think so, too.
MEGAN: A nine or ten-footer, so not a super big one,
still a big shark, but not really big for a white shark.
GREG: You think this is typical size
you guys are seeing up here?
HEATHER: It seems to be a lot of the juveniles,
a lot of the acoustic detections we get, it's, it's in that,
you know, let's say 9 to 12-foot range.
It's, it's the smaller guys.
GREG: Yeah.
NARRATOR: It's an important clue
and different to the pattern Greg and Megan see
some 260 miles to the south around Cape Cod.
GREG: We do see juveniles,
but a lot of our resident sharks are big males.
And those big males may be schoolyard bullies, you know,
pushing these smaller animals into other parts of their range,
which include, in the summer and the fall, Canadian waters.
NARRATOR: In 2019, a drone operator captured sharks
clashing off Cape Cod.
Could territorial adult males
be pushing smaller white sharks north?
GREG: We also know there are social interactions
between these sharks because we see scars.
You know, there are bites, there are injuries
that are clearly from other sharks.
And is that associated with mating?
Certainly it could be.
But it, on juveniles, it could also be associated
with negative interactions between sharks.
In other words, "Get the hell out of here.
This is my neighborhood."
♪ ♪
NARRATOR: Territory may just be part of the puzzle
of what's drawing sharks north.
Canada's Atlantic waters have some of the richest
fishing grounds in the world.
Sharks in the eight to nine-feet range are youngsters
and, for the most part, fish-hunters.
The shape of the seabed here,
combined with the cold Labrador Current
as it mixes with the Gulf Stream,
brings nutrients up to the surface.
(birds squawking)
It makes for the perfect conditions for marine life
to flourish in spectacular numbers.
♪ ♪
Canada is also experiencing
one of its hottest Augusts on record.
Could the mix of so much food and warming waters
be part of what draws white sharks north?
NARRATOR: With strong winds putting a hold on their search,
the team decide to split up
to check as many listening stations as possible
to see if any of their tagged sharks have shown up.
♪ ♪
Greg heads for one of Canada's most northerly stations
in Conception Bay, Newfoundland,
over 700 miles to the north.
Every spring, icebergs float past the entrance to this bay.
Even in summer, the weather is unpredictable,
and sea temperatures can plummet with little warning.
It's the furthest north
white sharks have ever been found.
♪ ♪
To check if there's been any new sightings,
Greg joins up with Mike Piersiak
from Fisheries and Oceans Canada.
GREG: How deep does this, this bay get?
MIKE PIERSIAK: This fjord gets up to well over 100 meters.
GREG: 300, 400 feet deep?
That's incredible. What comes in here?
MIKE: We can get bluefin tuna in here,
that'll follow the cod in, so, sort of a domino effect.
Once one comes, they all come.
GREG: And I could see why white sharks
would want to come in here and visit occasionally.
MIKE: Yeah, tons for them to eat.
GREG: There's a lot to eat, yeah.
♪ ♪
NARRATOR: The crew keep a careful watch
as the divers do a summer check of the listening stations.
♪ ♪
If a shark has passed within 1,500 feet,
it will record the date and time.
MIKE: Sorry, the wind's got me, Anna.
GREG: Let's fire this baby up.
MIKE: Let's see what we got.
GREG: See if you recognize any of these transmitters.
Nothing unusual to you?
MIKE: No.
GREG: No, I don't see any white sharks either,
so, no detections so far this year.
We've got some other receivers to check,
but I, I'm not surprised at all.
You know, we are really at the northern limit
of this shark's range.
And when you're at the northern limit of any species' range,
you're in a very dangerous place for that species.
The white shark is no exception.
NARRATOR: White sharks spend most of their time
in waters between 52 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit.
♪ ♪
While they can survive in temperatures
as low as 39 degrees,
spend too long in water this cold,
it's thought they can die.
GREG: I have certainly seen sharks
that have been cold shocked.
You know, it's happened very close
to where I live on Cape Cod.
Bunch of thresher sharks,
we had a really significant drop in temperature
late in the season, and those sharks became trapped.
They actually washed up on shore, frozen, which is amazing.
So it killed them.
And certainly we don't see a lot of white sharks go through that.
And that's because they probably avoid those areas
where those kinds of temperature extremes can happen rapidly.
♪ ♪
NARRATOR: Back in Nova Scotia, the weather has cleared enough
for Megan and Warren to check local listening stations
to see if any more white sharks have arrived.
MEGAN: Alright, 9142.
WARREN: 9142.
MEGAN: That's one of our fish.
WARREN: Definitely.
MEGAN: Alright. Dropbox.
9142, who are you?
Ah! That's one of Chip's.
WARREN: One of Chip's?
MEGAN: That's awesome!
He's gonna be so excited.
NARRATOR: Shark 9142 is a South Carolina shark
known as Asheville.
She was tagged by Chip on March 8, 2019.
At nine-foot, she's another juvenile, around 16 years old.
Females reach adulthood when they get to around 15 feet.
And just like the other sharks tagged in Carolina,
shark Asheville spent the spring
moving up the Eastern Seaboard.
She arrived in Cape Cod on June 23rd,
and stayed for seven days.
She first pinged in Nova Scotia on July 18th.
It's the third time Asheville has been detected
in Canadian waters.
And she's not alone.
MEGAN: No!
WARREN: Who's that?
NARRATOR: Three more sharks are detected
on the listening station.
MEGAN: Hold on, I've got to double check.
NARRATOR: One is a big male called Mr. Frisky.
MEGAN: So exciting! WARREN: On the 23rd, yeah.
NARRATOR: But the rest are all juveniles.
A pattern is emerging.
♪ ♪
Three days later,
and with evidence of white sharks in the area,
the team are back together in Wedgeport, Nova Scotia,
trying once again to get a camera on the back of a shark.
Within minutes, one checks out the baited lines.
HEATHER: Oh, here it is. GREG: He's on yours.
NARRATOR: If they can get the camera tag on,
it will be a first in Canadian waters
and could reveal what they hunt here.
HEATHER: Alright, tag's ready.
GREG: It's a good size fish.
MEGAN: Here.
HEATHER: Right here, right here, right here.
GREG: Get back. Get back. Back.
MEGAN: Yeah, look right there. Oh, Greg, you got it!
Oh, it's still too deep.
GREG: Little too deep. MEGAN: Oh!
GREG: Sliding past you. MEGAN: Oh!
GREG: Oh, (bleep).
GREG: He just grabbed the ball. MEGAN: Ohhh.
GREG: Damn it. HEATHER: A tuna.
NARRATOR: It's the second close miss for Greg and Megan.
♪ ♪
GREG: I think if I haven't been doing this for decades,
I'd probably throw myself overboard,
because it's, it's very disappointing.
You think you have that shot, but when in doubt, don't, right?
And that's what I did. I, I held back.
Shark passed, I think a little too deep.
Snagged another bait and took off.
And then you, you know, all you do is hope
you get one more shot.
♪ ♪
NARRATOR: With just four days left of the expedition
and time running out to get a camera tag on a shark,
the team decide to try a new location.
MEGAN: What we're seeing with the receivers
that we've checked so far
is there's little pockets of activity,
different places along the coast,
and one of the most active spots seems to be the Bay of Fundy.
So it might be a great idea to head there
and maybe we'll get a camera tag out down there.
It's probably our best bet.
Fingers crossed.
♪ ♪
NARRATOR: The Bay of Fundy lies just north of the US border.
It's home to the highest tidal surges on Earth.
(horn blows)
At this time of year, warm, humid air from the land
mixes with cool sea air, creating thick patches of fog.
This will be their last chance to get the camera tag
on a shark, and conditions could not be tougher.
♪ ♪
They begin to bait the water once again.
♪ ♪
GREG: Currents here are absolutely amazing, you know?
We got a 20, 30-foot tidal difference,
and that water comes in and out pretty quickly,
so I think that's gonna spread the, the scent trail around.
And these sharks are so well tuned to finding scent
that it works in our favor.
We'll see.
♪ ♪
MEGAN: Shark!
GREG: Whoa! WARREN: Oh!
MEGAN: Shark!
HEATHER: There we go. GREG: Game on. Game on.
MEGAN: Okay. Bring, bring all the floats in.
Warren, if it's pulling you, let the rope go.
GREG: Let it go. MEGAN: Let it go.
♪ ♪
MEGAN: No, no. GREG: Oh! Oh!
MEGAN: There it is. GREG: That's a white shark!
HEATHER: Oh, oh, my god. GREG: Look at that!
You gotta see this!
That was incredible!
HEATHER: Ah!
GREG: Geez!
HEATHER: Oh, there she is! Right here!
Yup. Greg, this side.
She's going under the boat.
GREG: Boy, she's fast.
HEATHER: She is fast.
There he is.
GREG: Awesome.
Look at this. Look at this.
HEATHER: There she is.
GREG: Oh, she's gotcha.
Yeah!
(cheering) Who did I hit? Who did I hit?
Ha ha ha!
NARRATOR: It's the first time a camera tag
has ever been deployed on a white shark in Canada.
It will record every move
the shark they've nicknamed Quady makes
for the next 24 hours, then release.
GREG: Ah, that was fantastic.
Did you see that?
WARREN: Yeah, I saw it.
(laughter)
Yeah!
MEGAN: I'm still shaking like probably half an hour later,
'cause I'm still so excited.
♪ ♪
NARRATOR: The team track Quady using a hydrophone
to pick up the signal coming from his tag.
(chirping)
MEGAN: Oh, yay!
WARREN: It's scanning and it'll send out the signal
and it'll bounce back.
55001, so it's found it.
MEGAN: Woo. Oh, okay. Cool.
NARRATOR: Staying close to the shoreline,
Quady hugs the seabed at 75 feet.
There's so much plankton in the water,
visibility is less than three feet.
Sensors log his depth, speed acceleration,
and even direction.
WARREN: Oh, this might be it coming back now. Yup.
NARRATOR: Out in deeper water,
Quady stays in the top 200 feet of the water column.
Unusually for a white shark, never diving any deeper.
Then 30 minutes in, he suddenly speeds up and heads south.
And they lose Quady's signal.
WARREN: Found zero.
(chirping)
♪ ♪
NARRATOR: 24 hours later, the tag releases.
Megan uses a radio signal to locate it.
♪ ♪
MEGAN: Whoa! Oh, basker!
A big basker!
That's amazing!
GREG: Big basking shark?
MEGAN: A basker!
It's beautiful! It's huge!
(laughs)
GREG: This place is an aquarium.
MEGAN: That was a big fish.
So cool.
It should be dead ahead.
♪ ♪
I think I see it right in the middle of the weed mat.
GREG: Oh, yeah, there it is.
MEGAN: Ah!
GREG: Alright!
♪ ♪
There it is. Beautiful.
MEGAN: Thank god!
GREG: Nice. Look at that.
What this is right now
is just a treasure trove of, of information.
MEGAN: Alright, so here we go. HEATHER: Okay.
NARRATOR: Back at base, the team pore over the footage.
HEATHER: Oh, neat.
GREG: Wow.
MEGAN: It just went straight to the bottom,
and there's not a lot of light.
GREG: Yeah, you put yourself down on the bottom there,
first of all, it's hard for anything else to see you.
WARREN: Certainly.
GREG: Because you have a really dark back,
and you're probably blending in really well
with that rocky, dark bottom.
MEGAN: But then it definitely goes out into deeper water.
Not for very long, though, like, it makes a couple
quick zigzag dives, and then the rest of the track
it stays pretty shallow in warmer kind of surface waters.
GREG: What's--look at that. That, that...
HEATHER: He must have turned around.
MEGAN: It's, oh, you can just see the side of it,
it's going after something.
Wait, whoa, whoa. Whoa!
HEATHER: Wait, wait. WARREN: Did it get something?
GREG: What was that? MEGAN: Okay, we gotta go back.
We gotta slo-mo it, because like a lot of times
with these things, it just happens so fast.
You can't even...
GREG: Because it definitely turned.
MEGAN: Oh, yeah.
GREG: Looked like it grabbed something.
MEGAN: Okay, so it's got its head pointed up now,
and then the next shake.
GREG: Right there. MEGAN: Yeah.
It's got something in its mouth.
HEATHER: What is that? MEGAN: I mean...
GREG: That's definitely something in its mouth.
The shark just fed.
WARREN: I guess it could be dogfish, it could be skates,
could be halibut, flatfish on there.
GREG: I don't know.
HEATHER: It's big enough it had to bite it.
WARREN: Yeah. GREG: Yeah. Yup, it did.
NARRATOR: It's the first glimpse
at what white sharks are up to in Canadian waters.
MEGAN: So this is really incredible for us to see.
I mean, this is one shark, right,
that's gotten a camera tag off of Canada so far.
But I can already tell you that they operate so differently
in this environment than they do off of Cape Cod.
A lot of people think of them as only seal-eaters
or mammal-eaters, but they have a very diverse diet,
and they're very opportunistic predators,
which allows them to take advantage
of all these wonderful, productive, unique habitats
throughout the course of their migration.
♪ ♪
NARRATOR: September 3rd,
and much of Canada breaks its heat records.
It's the last day of Greg's trip.
To find out if sea temperatures could be influencing
shark numbers in the Canadian Atlantic,
he heads up to Newfoundland to meet Frederic Cyr
at the Memorial University.
FREDERIC CYR: We have this monitoring program going on for,
for about, uh, 30 years right now.
GREG: Yup.
FREDERIC: And yeah, we, we monitor how the ocean
is behaving, and, and we seem to see a warming up
over the recent years, especially at the surface.
GREG: Really? FREDERIC: Yeah.
NARRATOR: Could warming surface waters be allowing white sharks
to penetrate further into Canadian territory?
FREDERIC: This is sea surface temperature average
over decades, so you have the '80s, the '90s, 2000, 2010s.
And what you see is basically, if you look at that,
you see the, the iso, isotherms moving up.
GREG: That is absolutely amazing.
Look at that shift in the black line.
And that indicates that white sharks are likely
to arrive earlier, spend more time here,
leave a little bit later.
I mean, I think this is really cool.
FREDERIC: You see here.
GREG: And it would explain why, you know, more white sharks
would come to these areas.
FREDERIC: One thing is that underneath the surface,
as soon as you hit about 50 meters,
it will still remain pretty cold.
So we will find here in the middle of the summer,
waters below zero degrees Celsius.
GREG: Really? Now, that's really cool, and I'll tell you why.
We've tracked a bunch of our white sharks from Cape Cod,
from parts south, as far south as South Carolina.
They move up here in the summertime.
They love these warm surface waters, you know?
But once they get down to about 150, 160 feet,
the 50 meters you're talking about,
they only go down for a short period of time.
NARRATOR: It's exactly the dive pattern
white shark Quady showed on the camera tag.
GREG: Well, it makes perfect sense to me,
'cause you're telling me if they go any deeper,
it's too cold for 'em.
FREDERIC: Well, I wouldn't like to be there.
GREG: No. No.
FREDERIC: Zero degrees Celsius. I don't know how they...
GREG: They can't do it. They just absolutely can't do it.
So it's really cool, because we're seeing
that the bulk of our fish spend almost all their time
in that warm surface layer.
FREDERIC: It's different.
NARRATOR: With white sharks in Canada
trapped in the surface layers of the ocean
and the evidence from the camera tag
confirming they're opportunistic hunters,
the team's review of the year's listening station data
brings further revelation.
A lot of sharks normally seen off Cape Cod are here.
MEGAN: This is really interesting
because a lot of these-- so, Broken Tail,
Scary Shark, Mr. Frisky, a lot of them were like
kind of our resident sharks for years.
They didn't even, we didn't,
don't have any detections of them this year.
HEATHER: Didn't even see them. MEGAN: Mm-mm.
HEATHER: Yeah.
MEGAN: It's really interesting that some of these guys
seem to have kind of shifted.
GREG: I'm also seeing a lot of South Carolina fish...
MEGAN: Lot of shifts. GREG: ...as well, you know?
But not a lot of big adults.
NARRATOR: Plotting the detections on a map,
the scale of the white shark presence becomes clear.
GREG: They're kind of just blowing up everywhere
at the same time.
HEATHER: We thought it was quite amazing
how many sharks we saw up here.
Um, this year there were 78 of them, 78 individuals,
which is the most we have seen in Canada
since we started monitoring.
MEGAN: That's crazy.
Off of Cape Cod we detected 120,
if that puts this in perspective at all.
That's a lot of activity up here.
NARRATOR: It's evidence Canada is a white shark hot spot,
particularly for inexperienced juvenile sharks.
And may explain why Canada witnessed its first shark bite
in 150 years.
GREG: It's been a phenomenal year for me.
If you asked me a few years ago,
what do you think about white sharks in Canada?
I'd say yes, they go there,
but I didn't realize the, the presence of these animals.
These sharks are spreading out
almost throughout Canadian waters.
This is an ancient animal.
It's been around for millions of years.
It's a survivor because it can adapt,
and it will continue to adapt.
We're going to keep seeing white sharks off Canada,
and quite possibly we'll see more.
♪ ♪
Captioned by Side Door Media Services