No, that's not a great white shark in the Hillsborough River

A 3.5-metre great white shark caused some concern on P.E.I. Saturday morning when data from the research organization Ocearch appeared to show it far down the Hillsborough River.

Ocearch Chris Fischer said it was a satellite issue and the shark was actually close to the shoreline on the north shore.

The 334-kilogram shark, named Bluenose, was tagged last year off Nova Scotia by Ocearch, a non-profit research organization that generates tracking data and does biological studies for large predators like great whites.

Fischer said the group noticed "ping" from the unusual location on the Hillsborough River on Saturday morning and began investigating.

"The shark appeared to be just up and down very quickly and the satellite was struggling to get a lock on the tag, so we removed the ping from the river. We believe the animal is just tight to the beach there on the north shore of P.E.I. not too far away from its location."

Fischer said it usually has to do with location of the satellites over a particular region and happens once or twice a year.

"Occasionally it will place a ping in a place like this, which we always then drill down into the data to determine the accuracy because it affects so many people," he said.

"We don't want people to be alarmed."

He said there have been instances when white sharks have gone far down rivers, but it's usually when an event like a "bait run" is occurring or there is a large amount of biomass in the area.

"So it does happen, but it doesn't appear to be happening in this particular case."

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