Hurricane Shark instance of hoax
Hoax images
Freeway image
The original "Hurricane Shark" image was created during Hurricane Irene in 2011, with a claim that the shark was on a street in Puerto Rico. According to The Washington Post, it likely originated on Reddit. In the aftermath of the hurricane, the image was aired by Miami Fox affiliate WSVN, was posted by the Miami Herald, and was widely shared on social media websites including Twitter.
The image was debunked by the Post, Snopes.com, and the Toronto Star. It had been created by combining an image of a flooded street in Puerto Rico with a photo of a shark taken by Thomas P. Peschak off of South Africa in 2003. The Post compared it to similar hoax images, such as one supposedly of Osama bin Laden's body following his death. Craig Silverman, writing in the Star, cast it as part of a larger phenomenon of hoax images appearing in the aftermath of significant events.The image has frequently resurfaced on the internet with claims that it was taken during various flooding events, including in Houston during both the 2015 Texas–Oklahoma flood and tornado outbreak and the 2017 floods caused by Hurricane Harvey, and in Daytona Beach, Florida, in 2016 during floods caused by Hurricane Matthew. Peschak has said his fans notify him each time the image re-emerges, but that "they're more outraged than I am".In popular culture
Hurricane sharks as hoaxes have taken on a life of their own, in social media and in the press. Doctored photos of sharks swimming in urban areas went viral on social media in virtually every disastrous storm and hurricane in the decade since, often copies of the image that first circulated during Irene. Some on social media have treated the Hurricane Shark as a meme, an in-joke hoax to be revived with each disaster, while others have genuinely believed in the authenticity of the photos being spread. Commentators have made comparisons to Sharknado, a film series that also involves sharks caught up in natural disasters. In response to the "now contains sharks" images circulated during Hurricane Florence, FEMA's Associate Director of Office of Response and Recovery, Jeffrey Byard, denied that "there's a sharknado effect or anything like that".Because of the recurring nature of the meme, fact-checkers and journalists in the media have repeatedly needed to clarify that the images of Hurricane sharks were hoaxes. According to Daniel Victor, writing for The New York Times in 2022, Hurricane Shark is the "longtime nemesis" of fact-checkers on social media. In Silverman's Verification Handbook, Phillips makes a case study of his work with Madrigal during Hurricane Sandy, describing the images they reviewed as "strange enough to make you suspicious, yet [not] implausible enough to dismiss out of hand". Rose Eveleth, in a 2014 piece for BBC Future about how to spot fake Sandy photos, includes as her list's final item, "If it has a shark in it, it's probably fake".
type of example of manifestation of representation of