Are Sharks Really Swimming the Streets After Hurricane Sandy?
There are certainly many devastating photos showing Hurricane Sandy’s destruction, but photos of sharks and seals swimming on sidewalks and in neighborhoods are probably not real. So, let’s just verify which photos have been confirmed as ‘photoshopped’ before this nonsense continues…
A real spiny dogfish swimming in the real ocean. Photo credit: NOAA.
1. Shark photographed in the front yard of a home in Brigantine Beach, New Jersey. Unverified, but many believe it’s fake because the guy who posted the picture originally also posted other fake shark photos, claiming they were definitely real.
2. Shark fin sticking out of the water in a flooded street in Brigantine, NJ. Fake. An easy one to confirm as fake, because the fin in the photo shows up on the first page of Google Images when you search “shark fin.”
3. Shark swimming on a highway in New Jersey. Fake and not even new. This photo first appeared online after Hurricane Irene in 2011, and was supposedly taken in Puerto Rico. The real shark was photographed while swimming near a kayaker in open waters.
4. “Wide-eyed seal” on a sidewalk in Manhattan. Real photo, but not from sandy. The seal in the photo survived the Duluth Zoo flood earlier in the year.
You can see more images from Sandy and find out which ones are real and which ones are fake, here.
Copyright © 2012 by Marine Science Today, a publication of Marine Science Today LLC.
