White sharks making way back to waters off N.B.

White Shark Bella has been swimming in the Gulf of St, Lawrence for the last couple of weeks

Article content There are a pair of white sharks patrolling the Gulf of St. Lawrence, with one of them nearing the Acadian Peninsula, and more are likely to be seen in the coming weeks. According to the shark-tracking website Ocearch, they’re often seen in the gulf through November. “Based on typical seasonal white shark movements, it’s likely more satellite-tagged sharks will ping off the New Brunswick coast in the coming weeks,” said Ocearch spokesperson Avery Diaz in an email on July 14.

“We’ve seen many tagged sharks move in and around the Gulf of St. Lawrence during this time of year. Water temperature and prey concentrations are important drivers of movement to this region.” Ocearch, a not-for-profit organization based in Jacksonville, Fla., that tags different species of fish off the eastern coast of North America, shows Bella, a 10-foot, two-inch, 729-pound female, is pinging east of Lameque, west of Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine (Magdalen Islands) in the gulf.

She was first tagged July 18, 2025, off Mahone Bay, N.S., said Diaz. As well, Cross, a nine-foot, 377-pound juvenile male is just off the northwestern tip of Prince Edward Island. Diaz said white sharks summer in the warmer waters of Atlantic Canada.

“White sharks typically move north in spring (typically mid May) as coastal waters warm and prey returns, and head back south in late summer–fall (typically by late November).” According to the Ocearch shark-tracker, Bella had spent most of the winter cruising the waters of the Gulf of Mexico but began her journey north in mid-April. She spent a couple of weeks in June off the eastern tip of Prince Edward Island before trekking north to the Magdalen Islands where she had been for at least a week in July before turning west toward New Brunswick sometime around July 9.

Cross spent the autumn and winter off the east coast of Florida and started moving north in April, pinging off the coast of Maine in June, before heading around Nova Scotia through the Cabot Strait to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Many other white sharks have made it to the gulf in recent years, including some that have made it up Chaleur Bay near Bathurst and as far as Belledune. In the last few years, other Ocearch-tagged sharks have visited the coast of New Brunswick including Simon, a 9’6”, 430-pound male; Jekyll, an 8’8”, 400-pound male; Keji, a 9’7”, 575-pound male; Andromache a 10’8”, 341-pound female and Ann Bonny a 9’3”, 425-pound female.

Currently, none of those sharks are in Canadian waters. For more on tagged sharks, visit the Ocearch website