The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission had to clarify that footage of a gigantic, and obviously fake, shark fin spotted off Tampa Bay beaches this week is indeed a stupid hoax.
Local television station WFLA ran a story on Sept. 24 with the headline “Multiple sightings of ‘enormous’ shark made on Tampa Bay beaches,” which featured user-submitted videos of what appears to be a hilariously fake, giant shark fin sticking out of the water near Clearwater Beach.
This, of course, resulted in multiple outlets like Q105 aggregating the story to point it went viral and was later covered on larger outlets like The Today Show.
However, the next day WFLA made contact with an FWC spokesperson, who clarified that the shark fin was more than likely very, very fake. “That is a huge dorsal fin and in such shallow water, you would expect to be able to see a portion of the shark’s back and/or the second dorsal or tip of the caudal fin,” said FWC Marine Fisheries Biologist Brent Winner to the station. “None of those are visible.”
Winner also pointed out that there are “bubbles” coming up from behind the fin, which probably came from some guy in a scuba suit.
It’s also worth pointing out that WFLA did not make a correction on their original story, rather they just updated it and changed the headline, which now reads “Videos showing ‘enormous shark’ near Tampa Bay area beaches a hoax, FWC says.”
But at least it didn't take a quote from an FWC expert for Twitter users to spot this fake shark footage.
— Samantha Smith (@sammyjsmith524) September 24, 2019
— Deuce (@deucez75) September 24, 2019
Not all fins are sharks. pic.twitter.com/ucmPt40faJ
— I'm an Extremely Stable Genius 2!🌊🌊🌊 (@Amusedandhappy) September 25, 2019
At this point, it's unclear exactly who is responsible for the shark hoax, but I think it's safe to assume that somewhere in Florida, someone's sitting around with a giant homemade shark fin reading this right now.
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