One more time, y'all: There are no sharks swimming in Irma's floodwaters

It's back.
 By 
Rachel Kraus
 on 
Original image replaced with Mashable logo

Oh freeway shark, we wish we could quit you.

A photo of a shark swimming on a flooded freeway made the rounds on social media during Hurricane Irma. But those affected by Irma flooding needn't worry about sharks—the photo is fake.

Published in National Geographic in 2005, the original photo of the shark was actually taken by photographer Thomas Peschak in South Africa. But it gets frequently doctored and recycled whenever there's a massive storm.

When Peschak took the photo, he was in the ocean — not a city street — observing the great white from a kayak. Which sounds terrifying, but at least the shark was safely in the ocean where it belonged.

Now, hoaxsters take the shark out of open waters and plop him onto freeways whenever and wherever streets are flooding. Over and over.

The edited photo most recently appeared in the Twitter melee during Hurricane Harvey — and this time around, Twitter was quick to point out the shark's amazing powers of cross-country teleportation.

So while Irma may have sucked up the sea and created urban oceans across Florida, it didn't pick up any great white sharks with it — Sharknado was on the SyFy Channel, remember?

Topics X/Twitter

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Rachel Kraus

Rachel Kraus is a Mashable Tech Reporter specializing in health and wellness. She is an LA native, NYU j-school graduate, and writes cultural commentary across the internetz.

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