‘Like a big dog’: B.C. divers film rare encounter with sixgill shark

'We weren't expecting it. And you see ... a giant grey-white shape come out of the darkness straight at you. It was pretty amazing.'

A group of divers off the coast of Lions Bay got more than they ever thought possible with the sighting of a rare shark on Thursday night.

It is possible to catch sight of a bluntnose sixgill shark off the coast during a night dive in August and September. But it is still rare.

However, during their first dive, while the sun was still up, the group spotted her: a juvenile female about nine feet long.

“It was quite amazing,” Mitchell Hewitt, a marine biologist and commercial diver, told Global News.

“We weren’t expecting it. And you see … a giant grey-white shape come out of the darkness straight at you. It was pretty amazing.”

Hewitt said the group was diving with the shark for about 10 minutes.

“She was very friendly,” he said.

“It was really amazing. Very playful. She actually swam between my legs, and I had, like, a dog, like a big dog, and I had to push her away, just so you know, just like she didn’t accidentally hurt me.”