A standup paddle boarder in Nova Scotia escaped without injury, but his board was not as lucky, after an encounter with a great white shark earlier this week.
Kent Walsh went out for a paddle on Tuesday evening in the ocean off Cherry Hill Beach on the South Shore when the serene atmosphere took a sudden turn.
“I kind of initially assumed that I hit something,” he said.
A shark swam up and grabbed a hold of his board, causing him to fall into the water. He remembers looking up to see the shark flailing, half out of the water, struggling to unlatch its jaws from the board.
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“I was like eye-level with its eye, cause I was in the water… Its big, deep, unblinking eye, just kind of staring back. And then like I said because of the floatation of the board, its whole dorsal fin was out of the water — everything was just like all right there.”
Walsh said he began hitting the shark on the head with his paddle and it eventually detached from the board, allowing him to get back to shore unscathed.
Marine veterinarian Chris Harvey-Clark analyzed the bite mark and confirmed the shark was a great white, roughly three metres long, likely a juvenile.
“The sea is not teaming with sharks that are dying to eat you. Most of these I think are accidents and the surfboard is a classic accident: that’s a come-from-below, look at a profile, ‘oh that looks good, that looks kind of seal-like or dolphin-like.’”
Harvey-Clark noted that more and more juvenile sharks are being seen in the maritime waters as the seal population booms.
“Don’t stop using the sea, but exercise situational awareness when you’re out there.”
—with files from Global News’ Ella MacDonald
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