While sharks occur in Canadian waters, available national tracking data shows attacks remain exceptionally rare despite occasional high-profile incidents.
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For many swimmers, shark sightings can bring immediate alarm, but reporting and tracking efforts in Canada suggest that attacks on people are far less common than Hollywood portrayals often imply.
The Canadian Shark Attack Registry characterizes shark attacks in Canadian waters as “exceptionally rare,” listing 31 reported cases over the past 330 years, including 15 confirmed attacks and four cases that were later discredited.
Of the attacks recorded in that registry dataset, only one was described as fatal in Canada, though the registry did not provide additional incident details in the information cited.
Cold water limits where many sharks can thrive, and the reporting notes that most of Canada’s water is too cold for most of the roughly 500 shark species, while freshwater lakes and rivers that people often swim in are not considered suitable habitat for sharks.
That said, the material points out that Canada is not shark-free, with incidents and sightings occurring across different coastal regions, including Quebec and Atlantic Canada.
In one recent account, the Montreal Gazette reported that a diver was bitten by a shark while diving about five metres below the surface off Quebec’s Gaspé Peninsula, with the diver later rushed to hospital and surviving the incident.
Two days after that Quebec report, another sighting circulated in Nova Scotia, involving a basking shark near the Bedford Basin Yacht Club, where video captured by staff showed the large animal moving with its fin above the surface.
The material says basking sharks are the second-largest shark species in the world, capable of growing up to about 40 feet long and weighing up to roughly 11,000 pounds, and that they feed primarily on plankton and other small organisms rather than hunting large animals.
Great white sharks are treated as a different category, and the reporting says sightings have been increasing in Atlantic Canadian waters, citing the Canadian Wildlife Health Cooperative’s involvement after a dead shark washed ashore at a beach near Halifax in July.
The material also references a 2021 great white shark attack off Cape Breton Island, where a 21-year-old woman survived and later recounted her experience during Discovery’s Shark Week, illustrating that while attacks are rare, they can still occur.
According to the Canadian Shark Attack Registry’s database referenced in the reporting, almost half of the recorded Canadian attacks happened in Nova Scotia, with additional incidents noted in Newfoundland and a small number elsewhere including Tofino, British Columbia, and even Pond Inlet, Nunavut.
For readers trying to assess what they may see from shore or while swimming, the information cited notes a practical visual cue used to distinguish sharks from dolphins: sharks’ tail fins are vertical and used side-to-side, while dolphins’ tails are horizontal with an up-and-down motion, and the advice given is to quickly get back to land if a vertical fin is spotted.
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