A record number of great white sharks have washed up in Canada over the past year. But perhaps surprisingly, this spate of dead shark reports may actually be a good sign for the local great white population, experts say.

On Aug. 7, a beachgoer on Prince Edward Island reported seeing a nearly 9-foot-long (2.7 meters) shark stranded on the shore of Greenwich Beach, along the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

The juvenile was the fourth great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias) stranding reported on Canada’s Atlantic coast in the past year, Marine Animal Response Society (MARS) representatives wrote on Facebook.

That’s compared with just one or two white shark strandings reported in the prior two decades, said Tonya Wimmer, executive director of MARS, a Canadian nonprofit organization.

This glut of recent sightings could be good news if it means the population of this threatened species is growing.

“We’re all crossing our fingers,” Wimmer told Live Science.

Since October, the four white sharks have washed up on the shores of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, Wimmer said, meaning they were spread out all over the Atlantic region of Canada. Three of them have been juveniles and one was an adult, she said.

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