Video of a possible shark roaming Florida streets is real: report

Videos like these always raise a brow. People have a hard time believing videos showing sharks swimming in flooded streets. Recently, one such video appeared on Twitter, and it turned out to be real. The vid shows a shark swimming in the backyard of Fort Myers, Florida., after hurricane Ian stormed through the area. According to Storyful, and the Associated Press, the video in question is authentic, but it still remains unclear IF that is a shark OR other ocean creature.

WATCH the video:

Dominic Cameratta, a real estate agent who recorded it on his phone, was interviewed by the news outlets, and the metadata of the video was examined to confirm that it was shot this week. The footage shows a fish flipping and flopping in the water that appears to be 4 feet long and equipped with pointed dorsal fins. “I didn’t know what it was,” Cameratta said. “I zoomed in, and all my friends were like, ‘It’s like a shark, man!’”

Regarding whether it was actually a shark, the experts had differing viewpoints. The fish appears to be a young shark, according to George Burgess, a former director of the shark department at the Florida Museum of Natural History. But according to Neil Hammerschlag, the head of the University of Miami’s shark conservation program, the animal was hard to identify, said a report on the Washington Post.

According to Snopes, videos featuring sharks in urban areas following hurricanes and significant floods have been debunked for over a decade. The latest one from Florida sure looks legit! The video is a bit grainy, but that signature shark swimming sure makes it feel authentic.

After Hurricane Irene struck Puerto Rico in August 2011, one picture of a shark swimming alongside a flooded highway was posted online. The same thing happened in Daytona Beach, Florida, in 2017, in Houston, and in Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina, in 2018. According to Snopes, the original photograph from 2011 was also a fraud.