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Images and movies of sharks and different marine life swimming in suburban floodwaters make for well-liked hoaxes throughout huge storms. However a cellphone video filmed throughout Hurricane Ian’s assault on southwest Florida isn’t simply one other fish story.
The attention-popping video, which confirmed a big, darkish fish with sharp dorsal fins thrashing round an inundated Fort Myers yard, racked up greater than 12 million views on Twitter inside a day, as customers responded with disbelief and comparisons to the “Sharknado” movie sequence.
Dominic Cameratta, a neighborhood actual property developer, confirmed he filmed the clip from his again patio Wednesday morning when he noticed one thing “flopping round” in his neighbor’s flooded yard.
“I didn’t know what it was — it simply appeared like a fish or one thing,” he informed The Related Press. “I zoomed in, and all my pals are like, ‘It’s like a shark, man!’ ”
He guessed the fish was about 4 ft in size.
Consultants had been of combined opinion on whether or not the clip confirmed a shark or one other massive fish. George Burgess, former director of the Florida Museum of Pure Historical past’s shark program, mentioned in an e mail that it “seems to be a juvenile shark,” whereas Dr. Neil Hammerschlag, director of the College of Miami’s shark conservation program, wrote that “it’s fairly laborious to inform.”
However, some Twitter customers dubbed the hapless fish the “road shark.”
The surge worsened in Fort Myers because the day went on. Cameratta mentioned the flooding had solely simply begun when the clip was taken, however that the waters had been “all the best way as much as our home” by the point the AP reached him by telephone Wednesday night.
He mentioned the fish could have made its means up from close by Hendry Creek right into a retention pond, which then overflowed, spilling the creature into his neighbor’s yard. A visible evaluation of close by property confirmed it matches the bodily landmarks within the video.
Leslie Guelcher, a professor of intelligence research at Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pennsylvania, was among the many on-line sleuths who initially thought the video was pretend.
“Don’t assume that is actual. In accordance with the index on the video it was created in June 2010. Another person posted it at 10 AM as in Fort Myers, however the storm surge wasn’t like that at 10 AM,” she tweeted Wednesday.
Guelcher acknowledged later, although, that on-line instruments she and others had been utilizing to determine the video’s origins didn’t truly present when the video itself was created, merely when the social media profile of the consumer was created.
The AP confirmed by the unique clip’s metadata that it was captured Wednesday morning.
“It makes a bit extra sense from a flooding standpoint,” she mentioned by e mail, when knowledgeable the fish was noticed close to an overflowing pond. “However how on earth would a shark go from the Gulf of Mexico to a retention pond?”
Yannis Papastamatiou, a marine biologist who research shark conduct at Florida Worldwide College, mentioned that the majority sharks flee shallow bays forward of hurricanes, presumably tipped off to their arrival by a change in barometric stress. A shark may have by accident swum up into the creek, he mentioned, or been washed into it.
“Younger bull sharks are widespread inhabitants of low salinity waters — rivers, estuaries, subtropical embayments — and sometimes seem in comparable movies in FL water our bodies related to the ocean reminiscent of coastal canals and ponds,” Burgess mentioned. “Assuming the situation and date attributes are appropriate, it’s seemingly this shark was swept shoreward with the rising seas.”
Cameratta despatched the video to a bunch chat on WhatsApp on Wednesday morning, in accordance with his pal John Paul Murray, who despatched the AP a timestamped screenshot.
“Wonderful content material,” Murray wrote in reply.
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