Watch 'curious' great white shark swim alongside boat near Yarmouth
'Alright, let's get out of here,' N.S. woman says on video after massive shark sighting
A Nova Scotia woman says a close encounter with a great white shark last week has made her more cautious, but won't keep her from enjoying ocean dips.
Duana d'Entremont and her husband, François, captured the moment when the massive shark swam alongside the couple's boat near Big Tusket Island, N.S., on Friday.
"See if I ever swim again," Duana d'Entremont says in the video after letting a surprised expletive slip. François, a fisherman, can be heard laughing in the background.
"Alright, let's get out of here," she continues. "This is where I fall in, you wait and see. Oh my land."
It was François who first noticed the shark's fin sticking out of the calm, glass-like water.
They steered closer and the shark approached the boat while Rockwell and Michael Jackson's Somebody's Watching Me played on the radio.
Duana sent her video to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, which confirmed Monday it was a great white shark.
"They said it was certainly a large adult and curious by the way it, you know, brought its head over to the boat," Duana told CBC Radio's Maritime Noon. "He said that's not unusual for them, that they are 'curious animals.'"
Duana, who lives in nearby Melbourne, close to Yarmouth, estimated it was about four metres long.
François, who said he sees sharks quite often in the summer, enjoyed seeing Duana's reaction to her first wild shark sighting.
"I was killing myself laughing so much I could barely speak," he said.
Duana said she often swims long distances in the ocean by herself, despite repeated warnings from her husband to be on the lookout for sharks.
"I've told her time and time again and she didn't seem to heed my precautions at all," said François.
Duana said she never worried until now.
'It did scare me'
"The DFO person said this morning, 'Oh yeah, they go close to shore looking for ... things,'" she said. "So yeah, it did scare me."
But Duana said she didn't want to let the shark win Friday.
She got back in the water for a short swim later that day, but made François go alongside her in an inflatable boat.
with files from Information Morning