Media goes overboard as great white strays into British waters

The annual silly season story about a man-eating shark encroaching on British and, by implication, Irish waters arrived today.

A fisherman filmed what experts say could be a great white shark just 20 miles off the Cornish coast in England.

Readers should note this is just 160 miles from Waterford, the nearest Irish landfall.

Nigel Hodge (44), who operates a fishing and boat trips business in Cornwall, said he spotted the large grey predator swimming near his boat and filmed it on his mobile.

"I was fishing on the starboard side and went to the port side to get the deck hose when I saw it," Mr Hodge said.

He estimated the fish to be at least 12-feet in length.

He later posted the footage to his Facebook page, where a number of experts said the fish was most likely not native to British waters, though they stopped short of confirming whether it was a great white.

This, however, didn’t stop several media outlets running the story under headline: “Great white shark spotted off Cornwall”.

One report even described the fish as “enormous”.

Reports that great white had inadvertently strayed as close as 1,200kms from the Irish coast sparked a near frenzy of reports in March.

Lydia - the one tonne, female great white - was being tracked by US marine biologists via satellite when she meandered into a cooler stretch of water in the mid Atlantic.

The story was dropped when the fish veered north in the direction of Greenland.