Fact check: Fabricated image of shark on highway spreads online again

Ana Faguy, USA TODAY
·3 min read
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The claim: Image shows a shark on a Florida highway

Hurricane Ian, a Cateogry 4 storm, hit the west coast of Florida on Sept. 28, causing massive damage and killing more than 100 people across three states.

Following the hurricane, some social media users circulated an image that purportedly showed a shark swimming down a flooded highway in Florida.

One Sept. 29 Facebook post with over 250 shares shows a screenshot of a tweet that includes the image along with text that reads, "There are sharks on the highways in Florida. Unreal."

The tweet was shared by the satirical Twitter account @BarryOnHere, but the Facebook image cuts the handle out of the screenshot.

Some social media users appeared to believe the image was real.

"That's insane," one user commented. "I would get the same where I'm at too. Be careful."

But the image is altered. It is an edited version of a photo that was taken in South Africa in 2005.

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USA TODAY reached out to the user who shared the claim for comment.

A neighborhood is inundated with floodwaters after Hurricane Ian, Thursday, Sept. 29, 2022, near Arcadia, Fla.
A neighborhood is inundated with floodwaters after Hurricane Ian, Thursday, Sept. 29, 2022, near Arcadia, Fla.

Image of shark is from 2005

The image featured in the Facebook post has repeatedly appeared online after hurricanes have made landfall. But the image is an edited version of a photo taken in 2005 by Thomas Peschak, an ocean photographer.

Peschak's original photo shows the same shark, a great white, swimming behind a kayak off the coast of South Africa. It can be found on his website.

Peshack's website explains that the shark in his image was later photoshopped into an image of a flooded highway.

"On August 24 (2011), the shark appeared on a social news website in the form of a photograph taken from the open window of a car driving along a flooded street," Peschak wrote on his website. "Next to the car was 'my' white shark swimming through the flooded streets of Puerto Rico."

He attributed the edited image to a "crafty Photoshop artist." USA TODAY reached out to Peschak for further comment, but he did not respond.

Fact check: Video shows flooded Houston school in 2019, not aftermath of Hurricane Ian in Florida

PolitiFact debunked the image after Hurricane Harvey in 2017. USA TODAY debunked the photo after Hurricane Laura in 2020.

Our rating: Altered

Based on our research, we rate ALTERED an image purporting to show a shark swimming on a flooded Florida highway. The shark was photoshopped into the image, which dates back to at least 2011.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fact check: Fabricated image of shark on highway spreads online again