Most people think of sharks as vicious predators. This state of mind was popularized by the movie Jaws , and more recently, by Deep Blue Sea . However, the perception is both unfortunate and incorrect, since there are relatively few unprovoked shark attacks on humans worldwide. Of the more than 350 species of shark in the worlds oceans only a handful of them are even considered dangerous to humans.
Dangerous species found in Canadian waters include the great white, mako and oceanic whitetip.
Overall, the chance of being attacked by a shark is considerably less than that of being hit by lightning or of being eaten by a crocodile. Most of those attacks that do occur are in the waters off of South Africa and Australia. In Atlantic Canada, there have been four accounts of sharks attacking small boats, three of which have been attributed to the great white shark by positive identification of teeth or tooth fragments found embedded in the hull. The majority of sharks eat fish and invertebrates, while some feed upon marine mammals such as seals and sea lions. Other animals have been found in shark stomachs as well.