Cellphone video captured a shark swimming in a flooded yard in Fort Myers, Fla. on Wednesday as Hurricane Ian ravaged the state.
The video shows a large, dark fish with dorsal fins sticking out of the water. Dominic Cameratta, a local real estate developer, who took the video told the Associated Press that he saw something “flopping around” in his neighbor’s flooded yard from his back patio.
“I didn’t know what it was — it just looked like a fish or something,” he said. “I zoomed in, and all my friends are like, ‘It’s like a shark, man!’”
Videos of ‘Hurricane Sharks’ usually turn out to be hoaxes, but this one is real.
An AP analysis found that the video was filmed in Fort Myers, Fla., on Wednesday and experts believe that the creature is in fact a shark.
George Burgess, former director of the Florida Museum of Natural History’s shark program, hold the AP that it “appears to be a juvenile shark.”
“Young bull sharks are common inhabitants of low salinity waters — rivers, estuaries, subtropical embayments — and often appear in similar videos in FL water bodies connected to the sea such as coastal canals and ponds,” Burgess said. “Assuming the location and date attributes are correct, it is likely this shark was swept shoreward with the rising seas.”
Yannis Papastamatiou, a marine biologist who studies shark behavior at Florida International University, said instances like these are possible because most sharks are able to sense the change in barometric pressure before a hurricane and flee to shallow bays.
He said the shark could have accidentally swim up into the creek or was washed into it.
