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CNN
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With a menacing grin, needle-like teeth, and a sharp pointed snout, a gray nurse shark isn’t a creature that most people would want to encounter. But Shalise Leesfield isn’t most people.
The 16-year-old Australian couldn’t think of a better creature to meet when scuba diving off the coast of South West Rocks, near her home in Port Macquarie, a coastal town north of Sydney.
“I know there’s a huge stigma around how scary they can look, but I promise you they are the sweetest animals ever,” she says. “They’re so docile and so curious, they’re like the Labradors of the sea.”
The slow-moving sharks, which like to dwell near the sea floor in warm, shallow waters, are – for the most part – harmless to humans. But the gray nurse shark (also known as the sand tiger shark and the spotted ragged-tooth shark) is under threat. Populations have fragmented,…
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