This shark photo went viral for the wrong reasons

Despite the amount of fake news that has been going around, the internet has been a place for "on-duty investigators" since it was first used. An example of this is a fantastic photo that, in 2003, went viral because of the mistrust of the crowd. As the internet never forgets, the teasing about it from time to time still arises.

The controversy

National Geographic photographer Tomas Peschak has gained some notoriety for taking a pretty incredible shot of a huge shark behind the yellow kayak being used by scientist Trey Snow. From that, it became a two-way street. He has indeed received a lot of recognition for the beautiful capture, but there is the flip side to the story.

In 2003, the image was posted online and began to spread across the web. Even if the internet had a much smaller number of users at the time than today, there were already enough people to create a certain amount of controversy.

A lot of people thought the picture was too awesome to be true, in the best-of-kind way "how did he get the picture taken at the right time?" Or "how did the guy in the kayak not die?" And then, of course, thousands of forum discussions emerged, with thousands of conspiracy theories; staff even analyzed shadows and refractive effects on the water. Much of the world was convinced that the picture was fake.

The situation was so great that when Peschak went to interviews, he used to take the original negative of the photo as proof!

However, as we said at the beginning, it was not just that. The internet does not usually forget, and even today Peschak sometimes receives emails with mounts of that same shark in unusual places, such as flooded streets. How much commitment, no?

How the original photo was taken

According to National Geographic, it took a lot of patience and creativity first.

Peschak is an important piece of documentary on marine life, and by 2003 he had received a hint about a large number of sharks cruising the southern coast of South Africa. This was an excellent opportunity to watch them.

The problem is that apparently the engine of the boat they were in changed the behavior of the animals. As this was something to be strongly avoided, Peschak decided to use a kayak with a GPS attached to follow one of the sharks into shallow water and observe its behavior. And it worked so well that he decided to do it again, to take a picture!

They waited for a calm day and a place where there were sharks, put Trey Snow in the kayak, and Peschak proceeded to take the pictures.

What they did not expect was that the shark would emerge behind the kayak as if analyzing it, nor that Trey would turn his head at the exact moment of the photo. But it all happened, and the photo "came out better than the order."

Some things do seem too good to be true, but that does not necessarily mean they are false. This case was an example of talent, patience, creativity and luck.

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