‘JAWS’ PHEW!

Sound no longer – or never was – a shark tank

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water … it is. And maybe it always was. A shark named Cabot captivated people on Monday, when he was reported to be the first great white ever in the waters of Long Island Sound. But now the sharktracking group that set off the feeding frenzy of interest says Cabot is not in the Sound — and maybe he never was.

OCEARCH, which tagged the 9-foot, 500-pound fish with a tracker last year off Nova Scotia, reported hearing a “ping” from him just off the shore of ritzy Greenwich, the most southwestern city in Connecticut. But by Tuesday afternoon, the tracker, which crashed from web traffic during the buzz around Cabot, put him south of Long Island, Cabot’s OCEARCH-run account said in a tweet.

“Well guys, my adventures are taking me elsewhere,” Cabot “tweeted.” “Maybe I’ll stop in again next year.”

So were the initial pings wrong, or is this shark a super swimmer? Even the experts aren’t sure.

“It is impossible to know 100% whether he was in the Long Island Sound or not, given the data we have at the moment because we received detections from both sides of the island in a short period of time,” OCEARCH program manager Ami Meite told the Hartford Courant Tuesday. If it was a mistake, it wouldn’t be the first one. Dave Sigworth, a spokesman for the Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk, Conn., said that in September 2016, a shark named Montauk falsely pinged from Long Island Sound. But even if Cabot didn’t visit Long Island Sound, potential causes remain for a shark to swim into waters long unbothered by sharp-toothed eating machines. The Sound is at its cleanest in years, which might lead to an increased likelihood of big predators like the great white dropping by, Sigworth said.

And it’s entirely possible distant cousins of Bruce — the shark that stalked the waters in “Jaws” — have visited the shores of Connecticut without being tracked.

Cabot was tracked paddling along Delaware Bay on May 14. If he did reach the Sound, it would be a heck of a story.

“Did it go all the way around Long Island and come in through the eastern end of Long Island Sound?” Sigworth asked. “There’s only two ways into Long Island Sound — so the other way, did it actually swim up the East River?”

If so, that would be worthy of a Steven Spielberg movie — one that could make his 1975 blockbuster look like a student film.