(NECN) - The water at Wallis Sands State Beach in Rye, N.H. was evacuated Tuesday afternoon after a reported shark sighting.
Rye police say a few people and a lifeguard saw what appeared to be a fin in the water just before 3 p.m.
The water was evacuated, and the marine patrol and Coast Guard were called in, but after about an hour of searching, nothing was found.
People were allowed to go back into the water up to their ankles.
According to Tony Lacasse at the New England Aquarium, the southern Maine and New Hampshire coast is not a great white shark habitat, adding that 90 percent of the sharks seen in those waters are blue sharks. Lacasse says the other type of shark it could have been was a basking shark.
Neither blue nor basking sharks feed on mammals, Lacasse says.
