Were Sharks In Florida Street After Hurricane Nicole? New Video Emerges

When Hurricane Nicole hit Florida on Wednesday night with wind, rain and flooding battering the state, a common hoax resurfaced. A video of fin-like objects being swept down a flooded road on the Sunshine State's east coast sparked a joke that the objects were two sharks carried through the streets by the rushing water.

The Category 1 storm hit the coast that was already vulnerable from Hurricane Ian, which hammered the state six weeks ago. Residents were urged to evacuate in certain areas as floodwaters cascaded down roadways. As residents were evacuating, one video shows a car stopped at a flooded intersection and debris carried by the floodwaters rushing through the intersection.

The Instagram video, posted by user ohana_surf_shop on Wednesday morning, showed two fin-like objects swept along by floodwaters near an intersection where the user was stopped in his car. The video taker joked, "There goes a shark, we've got a couple sharks," as the objects floated by. Another person in the car laughed during the video.

The post's caption said, "Sharks on the streets!!" and included hashtags for "Sharknado," a made-for-TV science fiction comedy disaster movie that is commonly referenced when shark hoaxes resurface during hurricanes.

Storyful, a social media intelligence agency, shared the video and said it was taken by Jordan Schwartz, a local man who owns Ohana Surf Shop in Stuart, Florida.

The video was taken after residents received evacuation orders when storm surges breached the coast and flooding overwhelmed local streets. Schwartz also recorded more debris transported by floodwaters down the roadway, including a kayak.

Schwartz told Newsweek that at first, the debris did look like sharks.

"It looks real all the way through," he said in an Instagram message. "So we were kinda in shock and [definitely] thought we had sharks at the beginning."

Schwartz said that as soon as the debris floated past the car in front of him, he realized it wasn't a shark. He said he wasn't aware of the common shark hoaxes that surface during hurricanes when he took the video.

"Actually amazed how much feedback we got from this," he said.

Schwartz shared the video twice on his Instagram page. The first was liked nearly 3,900 times and the second nearly 3,000 times.

Shark appearances are common hoaxes that originated in 2012 when a fake image of a shark was depicted swimming down a flooded highway. Since then, the image and others have surfaced on social media whenever a hurricane hits.

Most recently, a man videoed what appeared to be a shark flopping around in his neighbor's backyard in Fort Myers, Florida, during severe storm surge from Hurricane Ian.

After the video index was confirmed, experts said it's possible that a shark sensed a drop in barometric pressure that preceded the hurricane and, trying to flee, accidentally ended up in a retention pond which, when flooded, tossed the shark into someone's backyard. Storyful, a social media intelligence agency, verified the Fort Myers video was authentic but couldn't determine if the animal was actually a shark or a large fish.

The Hurricane Ian shark is an anomaly, and many shark-like objects sighted during hurricanes are later determined to be debris or fake images.

Update 11/10/22, 11:04 a.m. ET: This story was updated with comment from Jordan Schwartz.