Tour Operators Offering Unique Experiences With Toothy Predators
Atlantic Canadian companies are using ecotourism to allow people to get up close and personal with sharks while contributing to their conservation.
The Shark Company in Hare Bay, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Atlantic Shark Expeditions in Halifax, Nova Scotia, both offer their customers unique shark experiences.
The Shark Company was founded in 2011 by Bryan Oram. In his youth, he would accompany his father on fishing trips in Bonavista Bay, where they would often encounter sharks. But it wasn’t until 2011 on a fishing charter in Mexico with his wife that Oram got the idea to capitalize on these ocean predators.
“I wanted to catch sharks. When I got there, they informed me I was too late for sharks. It wasn’t the right time of year,” said Oram. “I did get to talking with the captain of the boat and asked some questions about how they look for sharks… I figured it would have to work back home, so I came home and collaborated with my dad, and we went back to our old commercial fishing grounds where we saw sharks in the past.”
Since then, The Shark Company has operated out of Hare Bay, where they allow customers to catch their very own shark at a rate of $999 per day. This price includes bait and tackle, licensing and insurance. The Shark Company will take them around 20 miles from shore, where they fish for porbeagle and blue sharks. According to Oram, catching a shark is no small feat.
“Porbeagle sharks are our native sharks to Newfoundland, and they are our heaviest sharks. They pull really hard, depending on the water temperature. They’re cold-water sharks,” said Oram. “If you get them now when the water is still cold, they’ll fight vigorously. An eight-foot, nine-foot, 10-foot shark will be up to 400–500 pounds. You could be looking at two to three hours before that fish is pulled up boatside.”
Over in Halifax, Neil Hammerschlag, a marine biologist and the owner of Atlantic Shark Expeditions, came to the province after working as the head of the shark research and conservation program at the University of Miami. A Canadian himself, Hammerschlag opted to return to Canada while still pursuing his research of sharks.
“There’s a rising number of sharks being sighted off the Atlantic coastline and I had visited Nova Scotia, which I love, and decided this would be a great opportunity to study sharks here,” said Hammerschlag. “I had been using the model of ecotourism to fund the science and educate people about sharks in South Africa, where I partnered with an ecotourism company.”
In taking that model to create Atlantic Shark Expeditions, Hammerschlag offers an opportunity for people in Atlantic Canada to get familiar with sharks in their own home waters.
“Most people in Atlantic Canada had no idea that there were any sharks here,” said Hammerschlag. “It was a great opportunity to educate and engage the public while funding the research as well.”
Atlantic Shark Expeditions takes customers around three nautical miles from the port of Halifax over the course of an hour, during which their crew of marine biologists will educate them on the biology and history of some of the species in the area. Upon arrival, the passengers are sized for wetsuits and dropped into an eight-foot-tall shark cage.
“We let the sharks come by, and they take pictures of them and we take pictures of them and depending on the species, we collect our own scientific data as well,” said Hammerschlag.
What unites The Shark Company and Atlantic Shark Expeditions is their dedication to the conservation of shark populations in the North Atlantic. For Oram, this involves the catching, tagging and releasing in conjunction with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) of any sharks they come across during their charters. Oram estimated that he and his guests have caught and tagged around 500 sharks since 2011.
“We get an awful lot of people that get on that charter boat that want to fish something big, but they have an adverse attitude towards sharks. Almost every time, at the end of the day when that shark is tagged and released, they come back to shore stewards of sharks,” said Oram.
“I always say to people, ‘This is your shark.’ I have to submit a number to DFO for that specific tag that’s placed on that shark, but I also keep my own personal logs, as well and I’ll name the shark. I give the guests the option to personalize their own name on that, and they think that’s pretty cool. If that tag ever pops up again, I do reach out to these people and say, ‘Hey, listen. Your shark was here.’”
Hammerschlag’s conservation and research efforts focuses on the long-term monitoring of shark demographics in the region. They determine size distribution, sex ratio, incidences of injury and build an identification database based on the shark’s pigmentation patterns.
“We’ll compare that with, for example, our collaborators in Cape Cod who are studying white sharks,” said Hammerschlag.
“We’ll compare notes and cross-reference to see if any of the sharks that they’ve seen there are here, which will tell us about the movements. In the case of white sharks, we also have the opportunity to tag them with tags that will provide real-time information on where their whereabouts are. So, we’ll be able to follow them and look at what their critical habitats are and where they spend most of their time in high resolution.”
Atlantic Shark Expeditions also takes biopsies from sharks using a pole that takes a small sample from the given shark as well as uses cameras to retrieve body condition data about the local sharks.
“We’ll be looking at building kind of a family tree to see relatedness among individuals and try to find siblings or parents or cousins and offspring to see how that relates regionally with, for example, other locations like in Cape Cod,” said Hammerschlag.
“We have special cameras which will help us to measure their length accurately and also their width and body height, which will give us an estimate of how big they are, which gives us an idea of how healthy they are.”
Both companies, while appearing on the outside as a fun tourism activity, uses the ecotourism model to continue the research they do. Both Oram and Hammerschlag said that one of the best ways an average person can help conserve shark populations is to enjoy a day out on the water with a service like theirs.
“We’re collecting scientific data that helps conserve these sharks,” said Hammerschlag. “The boat doesn’t run unless there’s fuel in the tanks and the crew to do it. So, the cost creates that opportunity.”
