Divers love to tell tales, and document them with photos. But even photos can lie, so let’s take a look at some of the most unlikely ones.
Turns out, you can’t trust everything you find on the internet!
Even though a photo seems very convincing, they can be faked, Photoshopped, and changed in a myriad of ways, and dive-related pictures are no exception. And while any number of divers may be guilty in tweaking the colors of a reef a tad too much, these photos don’t tend to go viral.
Other photos do, however, and a number of them are verifiably fake, while others are simply not possible to verify.
➜ You can also see 12 of the best ever shark pictures ever taken.
Shark Attacks Helicopter!
The most widespread of these is quite probably the “shark attacks rescue helicopter in San Francisco Bay”. An impressive picture to be sure, in all its impressive Jaws-like gory, but unfortunately, it has turned out not be accurate.
The Deep Sea Creatures blog has taken a look at the picture and found to two originals that were merged into one to create it. So for anyone who is or knows someone who works as helicopter rescue personnel, don’t worry, the risk of high-jumping sharks attacking is not real.
See the Truth about sharks
Great whites do leap out of the water as a hunting method for seals, most famously near Seal Rock, South Africa.
Sharks Takes To The Streets!
During the flooding that followed Hurricane Sandy, a number of photos surfaced showing sharks in the streets of cities and towns all along the East Coast. None of these were in fact verifiable, quite a few were confirmed as having been photoshopped, and some had even made the rounds before, during previous storms.
Sharks don’t tend to be washed up on land like that, so just because there’s a flood, sharks aren’t what you should worry about.
Mega-Jellyfish!
The lion’s mane jellyfish is the largest jellyfish species, and can grow up to impressive sizes.
A photo that has been making the rounds on social media, and even has popped up in a few articles, is one of a jellyfish and a diver, with the jellyfish being several times larger than the diver.
The photo is however unverified, and very, very unlikely. Lion’s mane jellyfish have been known to grow to more than 2 meters/6 feet in width, and with some 40 meters/120 feet long tentacles. Still the size of the species in the picture is just abnormal, so if it was verifiably correct, it would have created quite a bit of ruckus in scientific circles.
Diver Takes The Subway!
Again, when superstorm Sandy hit, a number of underwater photos came up, and one of the more creative was the “diver takes the subway”.
The photo featured a diver, in full scuba gear, diving in the crystal clear waters of the Times Square subway stop. An excellent bit of photoshopping, no doubt, but not real.
First and foremost, very few, if any, subways were completely submerged in water. Many had substantial amounts of water in them, sure, but not submerged completely.
Second, the water is much, much too clear. The water that floods during a storm are usually a combination of rain water, ocean water pushed in by the winds, and overflow from sewers. The sewer water comes from below, but the other water sources come from the street level, with all the debris and dirt that goes with that. Finally, if you note the lights in the roof, they’re on, which is unlikely in case of a flooding.
Nice article Thomas. How about expanding it with the original photoes before they was photoshopped? That way it’s even easier to see that it’s a photoshop trick 🙂
How about the picture of a shark following a canoe that Ive seen circling on the internet. Isn’t that a fake to?
Hi Sandra,
Unfortunately, the people who make these fake photos aren’t usually very forthcoming about putting the original material out there (would make it hard for them to stick to their claims that the photoshopped photos are in fact real). Often, makers of fake photos will combine a public photo with a privately taken one for credibility. There are cases where two publicly available photos have been used, as in the case of the shark attaching a helicopter: http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/blsharkattack2.htm.
Ultimately, with the ones where we can’t find both original source photos, we can only make an estimation of the veracity of the photo. Things like probability play a bit part, such as the photo of the massive jellyfish; no lion’s mane jellyfish of that size has ever been reported, so the photo would be a scientific sensation, yet the photographer has not come forward to claim his fame. So while we can’t 100 % dismiss the photo, we have to say (in Mythbusters terminology) that is is probable that it is fake.
I haven’t seen the photo in question, so I don’t know if it is real. Can you post a link?
Hi Thomas,
Thank you for answering me. I can see the problem, of cause they want to hide the real picture to make their faked picture look more realistic.
Well it was on a social site so hard to find, but after searching in google I found the real story behind the picture in question. http://www.thomaspeschak.com/kayak-great-white-sharks-/
Apparently its very real.. who could have known.
Thanks for a great article!
Wow, that’s an amazing picture. And great to hear that it is actually real! 🙂