Florida is full of wildlife, and any resident will tell you it’s not uncommon to see a potentially dangerous animal like an alligator or bear.
But in the wake of Hurricane Ian, which devastated communities in Southwest Florida, photos and videos have been surfacing of unusual findings inside and around people’s homes. In one, a marine animal that looks like a shark appears to swim through the flooding near homes in Fort Myers.
The video first started making its rounds on Twitter where it quickly went viral, though many questioned if it was real.
The storm surge is so powerful from #HurricaneIan that it has brought a shark into the city streets of Fort Myers.
@BradHabuda pic.twitter.com/RHY0kK5RHR
— Colin McCarthy (@US_Stormwatch) September 28, 2022
But the Associated Press confirmed that the clip was filmed last Wednesday by a man named Dominic Cameratta who filmed from his backyard in Fort Myers during the storm surge.
“I didn’t know what it was — it just looked like a fish or something. I zoomed in, and all my friends are like, ‘It’s like a shark, man,'” he told the outlet.
The video has since been viewed over 13.7 million times.
“I wish I was there so I could help him get back to the ocean,” one user lamented. “Just a little reef shark from the looks of it.”
AP also confirmed that the metadata of the video clip showed that it was in fact filmed on Wednesday morning.
“I hope it gets back to open water safely,” another Twitter user said.
Though it is not confirmed whether or not the large fish (estimated to be about 4 feet in length) is actually a shark, experts think that it may be a bull shark.
“Young bull sharks are common inhabitants of low salinity waters — rivers, estuaries, subtropical embayments — and often appear in similar videos in Florida water bodies connected to the sea such as coastal canals and ponds,” George Burgess, former director of the Florida Museum of Natural History’s shark program told the AP. “Assuming the location and date attributes are correct, it is likely this shark was swept shoreward with the rising seas.”
Ian made landfall in Florida last Thursday at Cayo Costa near Fort Myers and Cape Coral, sustaining winds of over 150 mph.
Reports of mass damages and power outages have been coming in since last week, though it is still unclear exactly how vast and devastating the damages sustained are.
