After Hurricane Ian ravaged Florida, inflicting widespread flooding and devastation, a person in Fort Myers noticed one thing peculiar within the floodwater exterior of his dwelling. It appeared like a shark fin peeking out of the water.
Dominic Cameratta shortly filmed the creature swimming between the houses in his neighborhood. Prior to now, individuals have claimed to have noticed sharks after hurricanes, however the Related Press confirmed Cameratta did movie this video in his yard after the storm.
Cameratta instructed CBS Information he wakened on Wednesday to see the pond in his yard was beginning to overflow from the rain. "It appeared like there was a fish in there. I type of zoomed in on it, I used to be type of stunned," he mentioned. He and his spouse despatched the video to mates, who handed it alongside to their mates.
Somebody posted the video on-line and it went viral, with many individuals having the identical thought – a shark was swimming in the course of a neighborhood.
Cameratta mentioned his good friend urged it was a bull shark, which have been noticed in brackish water earlier than. Bull sharks have even swum into landlocked states, by touring from oceans into rivers, just like the Mississippi, in keeping with a research revealed in Marine & Fishery Sciences,
Whereas it's inconceivable to inform if the finned animal he filmed was undoubtedly a shark, George Burgess, former director of the Florida Museum of Pure Historical past's shark program, instructed the Related Press it "seems to be a juvenile shark."
Nonetheless, Neil Hammerschlag, director of the College of Miami's shark conservation program, mentioned "it is fairly laborious to inform" if it was a shark. CBS Information has reached out to a number of specialists to try to assist settle the controversy.
Cameratta would not use social media, so he did not know individuals have tried to pretend shark sightings after hurricanes earlier than. In 2017, a Twitter consumer posted a pretend picture of a shark swimming on a freeway in Texas after Hurricane Harvey, and it went viral – regardless of being fully fabricated.
He mentioned his dad joked that he ought to have fished the animal out of the water himself. "This has been such a traumatic and scary and unhappy time with the hurricane, however the shark video has grow to be one thing at the very least we will type of snigger about now," he mentioned.
Cameratta mentioned his household stayed within the neighborhood throughout the hurricane however has since left. "Very scary," he mentioned. "We had ladders in our lounge, I did not know if we would need to climb onto the roof or not." He mentioned whereas the water did rise round his home, it quickly subsided.
"We did not depart our home till the water went down round mid-morning the following day," Cameratta mentioned. "We locked up our home for now and headed to the East Coast to get a bathe and to get out of there."
Officers in Florida are warning residents to remain indoors and keep away from going into floodwaters. Harmful wildlife might be lurking within the water, and there have been stories of sewage, alligators and snakes within the floods, Collier County authorities tweeted on Thursday afternoon.
After hitting Florida this week as a Class 4 storm, Hurricane Ian moved north and made landfall in South Carolina on Friday as a Class 1.