Most Nova Scotians are trying to avoid sharks at the beach this summer. Anna Bald has just rescued one.
The Petite Riviere resident was walking her dog, Pipen, at Cherry Hill Beach on Saturday, July 23, when she heard a woman with two children in life jackets spied the stranded shark.
“He had his phone out and was taking a picture and he was like, ‘Oh my God, oh my God,'” Bald said Thursday.
“And I looked back and I could see the shark coming down the beach.”
Calba didn’t have time to think, he handed another bystander his dog’s leash and grabbed the base of the shark’s tail.
“The skin was very rough, almost like sandpaper,” he said.
“I’ve handled fish in the past and it’s one of those things where they’re pretty slippery and they’ll just slip out of your hands. But I found I could get a purchase because it was so hard and I quickly dragged it back.”
This is a juvenile blue shark that was recently stranded at Cherry Hill Beach. pic.twitter.com/r0x3RGt9z0
— Chris lambie (@tomhamibe) August 4, 2022
Bald didn’t think he had much time.
“The one thing I know about sharks is that they can’t really rip – they have to keep moving and moving water through their system or they die pretty quickly,” he said.
“So I just wanted to get him back in the water so he could continue.”
The shark made no attempt to bite her.
“He was kind of distracted, I think he was on the ground,” Bald said. “He looked pretty worried about trying to jump back into the water.”
He got out where the water was just above his knees when two surfers stepped in to help.
“Then all the surfers had run to the beach and a couple of them came up to me and it was like too many people and it felt a little more dangerous because I felt like I couldn’t jump the path that fast.” Bald said.
“And the guys said, ‘We’re wearing wetsuits.’ We’ll take it further.’ And I didn’t really think I needed to go much further than that, so I was happy to let it go and let them have a hand. I said, “Okay, it’s all yours; I’m out of here. But it was really exciting. I didn’t really think too much about the process, I just tried to do it as fast as possible and get out of there.”
“By Its Own Steam”
When he retrieved his dog, Bald said he could see the shark still in the shallows. “But it was kind of under its own steam at the time.”
The two surfers who jumped in to help “were trying to direct it a little bit, but it was swimming,” he said.
“I felt like once I got back in the water, I was going to be fine because I didn’t have any visible signs of injury.”
The painter and part-time restaurant server said she couldn’t get over the shark’s “dusty dark blue” color.
“And her womb was as pure as beaten snow. It was really cool,” Bald said. “If I had been older, I think I would have thought differently about participating.”
Bald, who grew up in Riverport, said her experience with the shark won’t make her think twice about going back to the ocean.
“All my life I’ve known there are sharks in the water,” he said.
He recalls seeing photos of “pretty big creatures coming out of the water” at the Riverport Shark Fishing Derby.
“Now we have Ocearch, which is doing all the tagging,” Bald said. “But I always knew there were sharks around. I don’t know if I would necessarily say there is more or less with the change in water temperature. But I think what we have now is more data. So I think people are more aware of them.”
Maple, a 3.54-meter, 573-kilogram great white shark tagged off West Ironbound Island, has a wound on its side that researchers believe may have been a bite from another, larger shark in September 2021. – OCEARCH
Two experts examined a photo and a short video of the shark to identify the creature.
“This is a blue shark,” said Heather Bowlby, a marine biologist who leads DFO’s shark team at Bedford Institute.
“Blue sharks are the most common pelagic shark species in Canadian waters.”
The shark that Bald dragged back into the ocean appeared to be about 1.5 meters long. That would make him a junior, Bowlby said. “Males and females are thought to mature at larger sizes, around 220cm.”
She hopes most people try to avoid being bitten, or at least be aware of the potential for being stung when handling a shark. But they may not be aware of the damage that shark skin can cause.
“In terms of danger, probably the most likely danger would be the possibility of being struck on the bare skin by the tail or the body of the animal,” Bowlby said. “Blue shark skin is incredibly abrasive and will leave a pretty painful ‘carpet burn’.”
People are seeing more sharks because the equipment to detect them is getting more advanced, said Heather Bowlby, research manager at Canada’s Atlantic Shark Research Laboratory in Bedford, NS.
It’s always difficult to determine why a jam happened, he said.
“The most common hypothesis is that the animal would have been following prey and become trapped,” Bowlby said.
Steven Campana, a shark expert at the University of Iceland, also identified the creature Bald dragged out to sea as a juvenile blue shark.
“It’s very unusual to see it on a beach like this, as blue sharks like water deeper than 30 meters,” Campana said.
“So it may have been injured elsewhere, perhaps from being caught in a commercial fishery. If that were the case, you wouldn’t see any external injury; the injury would be internal.”
I couldn’t think of any other reason to explain why the shark would be on the beach.
“And unfortunately, if he was injured enough to be on the beach, the ‘rescue’ of well-meaning people is unlikely to help them,” Campana said. “Sharks are not like whales.”
‘Is it dangerous to handle a shark like that? absolutely’
He was adamant that handling a shark of this size by the tail can be risky.
“Is it dangerous to handle a shark like that? Absolutely,” said Campana.
“Blue sharks have enough flexibility to move their heads and bite the person carrying the tail. Shark biologists would always hold the midpoint of their back to prevent them from biting while being measured or tagged.”
For his part, Bald hopes that the shark he recently dragged out to sea has survived. He thinks he might have been chasing sea ducks or mackerel, both of which are plentiful now at Cherry Hill Beach.
“I really hope he wasn’t hurt, and he was aware of the fact that what he was doing was dangerous. But I really couldn’t see him getting spoiled on the beach. It is such a gift to have an interaction with an animal. And while all animals can be dangerous to some degree, I just tried to do it as quickly and non-invasively as possible, without hurting myself,” Bald said.
“I would do it again, but I hope not.”