Sharks, sharks everywhere...

“So why are we worried about sharks?” For most people who are afraid to swim in the ocean it is because of the 1975 movie “Jaws.” We have 19 species of shark in canadian waters, about 200 million sharks off eastern Canada but very few that attack people.

Dr. Steven Campana spoke to our club this week about several kinds of sharks and about his research and the type of information he is collecting. Sharks are tagged with a sattelite tag which is programmed to pop off and transmit the data it has collected including the depth, temperature and location of the sharks' travels. He has learned, for example, that the Porbeagle prefers cold water but the females travel thousands of kms to give birth in the warmer waters of the sargasso Sea.

Dr. Campana knows of only 3 species that attack people: the Great White Shark, Bull Shark, and Tiger Shark which is rare in canadian waters. To help avoid shark attacks he suggests we don't swim at dawn or dusk or at the mouth of a river.

Dr. Steven Campana is a Senior Scientist at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography, where he directs a research program on the population dynamics of sharks and other fishes.