Quote:
Originally Posted by Dannowar
(Post 191560)
Wait...there's sharks in la jolla?
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Great white shark story turns out to be hoax
Image showing what looks like large predator lurking off San Diego makes headlines and fools expert, but turns out to be doctored dolphin photo
</hgroup> <time>April 25, 2014</time> by
Pete Thomas
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What appears to be a great white shark lurking off San Diego; photo by Will Phillips, via Facebook
A large
great white shark said to have been photographed close to shore off San Diego this week was reported by local news stations.
The photo, at right, sent by a viewer, shows the dorsal and tail fin of what looks like an apex predator, and its close proximity to the Point Loma headland.
Ralph Collier of the Shark Research Committee told
10News that, based on the photo, it was a great white shark measuring about 15 feet. Collier said the photo was authentic.
News 8 and 10News reported the sighting Wednesday, and it was widely shared via social media, just weeks before the spring and summer beach seasons. Scary stuff!
However, it turns out that the photo is part of a hoax. The photographer, Will Phillips, confessed to 10News that he had doctored a photo of a dolphin to make it look like a shark.
The
News10 story, basically a retraction to its Wednesday story that included the Collier interview, was posted Thursday night. News8 has removed its story about the shark sighting from its website.
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The original image shows the dolphin swimming off the same area. It was later doctored to look like a great white shark. Photo by Will Phillips, via Facebook
But the hoax was discovered before News10 talked to Phillips, by at least one other shark expert.
Martin Graf is the managing director of
Shark Diver, a commercial shark-diving company that specializes in voyages to Mexico’s Guadalupe Island, where great whites congregate from late summer through early winter.
Graf discovered the original photo on the Internet and posted it, along with the shark photo, on his Facebook page. He wrote: “The picture on the right (the doctored image) appeared on CBS 8- San Diego’s Facebook page, with the headline ‘Photographer spotted this white eating a seal right off the tip of Point Loma.’ The picture on the left (the dolphin photo) is the pre-photoshopped shark!”
In the News10 retraction story, Phillips explained that, as a joke, a friend had doctored the image of a dolphin photographed in March.
The joke, although it seems to have been without bad intentions, is not funny as far as some are concerned, because it could have created a scare.
“Why someone would do this is simply beyond rationality,” reads one of the Facebook comments. “Unfortunately, this picture is making the rounds. Please spread the word that this is a lie.”
As for Collier, he apologized on the
Shark Research Committee website, saying the image “fooled a number of colleagues as well. Photo shop. Our authentication procedure did not work this time.”
In an email to GrindTV Outdoor, Collier was more defensive, stating that the doctored photo
does show an actual white shark, but the shark photo was plastered on top of a dolphin photo.
“If you look at the photograph of the shark, from the dorsal fin to the caudal is a white shark,” Collier stated. “Using Photoshop [he] took a photograph of a white shark swimming at the surface, from its dorsal fin to tail, and stuck it on top of the dolphin picture from the dolphin’s dorsal fin back … So my ID and that of several colleagues is correct … it is a white shark. It just wasn’t in the picture when taken.”
Meanwhile, with the summer season fast approaching, it’s worth noting that great white sharks do utilize San Diego coastal waters; most are juveniles, but some are large adults.
They’re part of the ecosystem, but do represent a threat to swimmers and surfers. In fact, exactly four years ago (on April 25, 2010) a 66-year-old triathlete was
killed by a great white while swimming off Solana Beach, about 20 miles north of Point Loma.
