East Coast authorities working on warning signs for great white sharks

There's growing evidence that the number of great white sharks is on the rise along Canada's East Coast, where plans are in the works to post warning signs for beachgoers for the first time.

There's growing evidence that the number of great white sharks is on the rise along Canada's East Coast, where plans are in the works to post warning signs for beachgoers for the first time.

Fred Whoriskey, director of the Ocean Tracking Network at Dalhousie University in Halifax, says the population of these apex predators appears to be growing because of successful conservation measures and a rapidly growing food supply, mainly grey seals.

"We're probably seeing more animals here, though we don't know how many," he said in an interview.

"No one has a handle on the northwest Atlantic white shark population .... (But) I've spoken to a lot of lobstermen who are seeing things that they have not seen for 40, 50 years on the water. That would suggest (the sharks) are reoccupying areas they have been away from."

The North Atlantic population has been protected in Canada since 2011 and in the United States since 1994. Those protections were introduced after studies showed the population had declined by as much as 80 per cent as fishing increased in the 1970s and 1980s.

 Now they're making a comeback.

Aside from more frequent sightings, there have been reports in Nova Scotia of two attacks in recent years, one of which injured a swimmer and another that killed a dog. As well, warning signs and flags have already been installed at beaches in Massachusetts and Maine following two fatal shark attacks, one in 2018 at Cape Cod and another in 2020 at Maine's Casco Bay.