How to avoid great white sharks and what to do if you encounter one
Global News
Vanessa Schiliro, a marine biology student at Dalhousie University, wants to educate the public about how to avoid shark encounters and what to do if you come across one.
Great white sharks typically return to Atlantic Canadian waters around this time of year, and their presence has been captivating people around the Maritimes recently, due in part to efforts to tag and track their movements.
The increase in shark activity also increases the likelihood of encountering one — while swimming or surfing, perhaps.
That’s why Vanessa Schiliro, a marine biology student at Dalhousie University, decided to educate the public about how to avoid shark encounters and what to do if you come across a great white .
She helped develop a video and infographic of “shark-smart tips” to both dispel some myths and keep both humans and sharks safe.
“I think it might be obvious that I’m a huge shark lover and I’ve always been very passionate about shark research, conservation and education,” she told Global News.
“But the specific goal for this project was inspired by a lot of the headlines that I was reading about the amount of great white sharks that we were tracking in Atlantic Canada and right here in Nova Scotia, which is very, very exciting.”
She said she realized there was a difference between “a planned and unplanned interaction” and she wanted to help people with the latter scenario.
“I wanted to address the potential gap in terms of communicating, ‘Well, what should you do if you do encounter a shark and how do you even decrease the odds of that happening?'” Schiliro explained.
