Eye-to-eye contact with great white shark was 'just incredible,' Grand Manan man says
Andrew Jones captured his close encounter on video
Andrew Jones loves to tell fishing stories and playfully admits they're not always all true, but the Grand Manan, N.B., teacher has video proof he looked a great white shark in the eye Thursday.
"I think it was looking … to see if maybe I'd be maybe a good meal," he told CBC News Friday.
"I guess I probably should have been scared, but we've got a big boat and to see something like that, just marvellous. Just incredible."
Jones, 54, was fishing on his boat, School's Out, with two of his buddies in the Bay of Fundy, off the northern part of the New Brunswick island, between Whale Cove and Wolf islands.
They stopped for lunch and were chatting with the engine off. That's when they spotted the telltale dorsal fin in the clear, blue water.
That shark looked us right in the eye as it sailed on by.- Andrew Jones
The shark was "large and it circled our boat several times," said Jones.
"I thought, 'We should take a picture,' and [then] I thought, 'Why am I taking pictures? This is a video situation.'"
He captured the shark on video, just as it was coming around the bow.
"That shark looked us right in the eye as it sailed on by," said Jones, still awestruck.
He estimates the shark was about 10 to 12-feet long, based on the size of his 27-foot boat. "Of course like every good fish story, the fish gets bigger each time."
In the 19-second video, the shark opens its mouth just as it ducks under the dive platform on the boat.
"Oh my … Look, he just bit us," Jones exclaims from behind the camera. "Wow!"
After he stopped recording, the shark rolled "and then, of course, tail-slapped the side of the boat," and disappeared into the roughly 260-foot depths.
Jones suspects the shark was just curious — "just like we are curious of them."
One of his friends isn't so sure. "He said, 'You know, I don't know whether that shark was hungry or horny, but either way I didn't want him in the boat.'"
Video goes viral
Jones posted the video on Facebook. "A HUGE great white shark just bit the dive platform on my boat. That was a once in a lifetime experience and we got him on video (against the advice of the crew who thought we should be leaving)," he wrote.
Within 24 hours, it had been viewed more than 100,000 times. By Friday at 8 p.m. AT, the number of views grew to 136,000 and nearly 450 people commented.
Jones said he got so many calls and texts after he posted the video, he had to hand the helm over to his friends to steer them home.
"I was the teenager on the cellphone for about an hour there."
No danger
Chris Fischer, founder of Ocearch, a non-profit organization based in Utah that specializes in marine research, is among those who watched the video, and confirmed to CBC News it was great white shark — a mature female, about 12 feet long.
It posed no danger, he said. It was "giving them a flyby probably to see if [it] could pick up an easy meal, and then it's on its way."
It's not unusual for a great white to be in the area, said Fischer. His group has tagged about 40 of them in the region.
This is the time of year when the sharks arrive in Atlantic Canada for their summer-fall feeding aggregations, said Fischer. They prevent the seals from hitting the fish stocks too hard and "keep everything in balance."
Although Ocearch's live global shark tracker shows a 10-foot, eight-inch, 341-pound female white shark named Andromache pinged in the Grand Manan area Thursday, Fischer said Jones saw a different shark.
If it was Andromache, the tag on her dorsal fin would have been visible in the high-quality video, he said.
And while Jones' shark has a visible notch in its dorsal fin, Fischer believes that's probably from getting caught in fishing gear or courtesy of another creature defending itself. Andromache pinged again on Friday morning, so her tag is still on her, he said.
Endangered population rebounding
White sharks are classified as endangered under Canada's Species at Risk Act.
But the apex predator is thriving, according to Fischer. He credits the protective and management efforts of Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the U.S., as well as individual provinces and states over the past 30 to 40 years, such as removing a lot of infill nets and some long lines.
"We're just seeing the ocean explode with life," including the steady recovery of great white populations to their historic range, said Fischer.
"It's super exciting to see and I think we're going to see more and more of it."
That means people need to "be smart," said Fischer.
"As we go down to the ocean with our families, we need to realize we're no longer walking into a compromised system. We're walking into a wild ocean that is really rebounding."
People should look at the water before they go in, he said. If they see a bunch of birds, fish and seals, "that is the food chain colliding" and could attract a shark. He recommends they stay out of the water until the activity settles down.
Once they do enter the water, they should continue to look around and be aware. "That's about all you can do to try to minimize what's already a highly unlikely event," he said, noting about a dozen people are killed in shark attacks worldwide each year, compared to the "thousands and thousands" who drown.
Jones said he's glad his video will help make people more aware of the presence of sharks and the need to be cautious while swimming or kayaking.
He loves whales and has always been partial to white-sided dolphins. "They take the cake."
But after his close encounter with the great white, "maybe that's my new No. 1 because that was just an experience I've never had before," he said.
"It was just one of those incredible events."