BREAKING Average hourly wage in Canada now $34.95: StatCan
Average hourly wages among Canadian employees rose to $34.95 on a year-over-year basis in April, a 4.7 per cent increase, according to a Statistics Canada report released Friday morning.
Photos and videos of sharks and other marine life swimming in suburban floodwaters make for popular hoaxes during massive storms. But a cellphone video filmed during Hurricane Ian's assault on southwest Florida isn't just another fish story.
The eye-popping video, which showed a large, dark fish with sharp dorsal fins thrashing around an inundated Fort Myers backyard, racked up more than 12 million views on Twitter within a day, as users responded with disbelief and comparisons to the "Sharknado" film series.
Dominic Cameratta, a local real estate developer, confirmed he filmed the clip from his back patio Wednesday morning when he saw something "flopping around" in his neighbor's flooded yard.
"I didn't know what it was -- it just looked like a fish or something," he told The Associated Press. "I zoomed in, and all my friends are like, 'It's like a shark, man!'"
He guessed the fish was about four feet (1.2 metres) in length.
Experts were of mixed opinion on whether the clip showed a shark or another large fish. George Burgess, former director of the Florida Museum of Natural History's shark program, said in an email that it "appears to be a juvenile shark," while Dr. Neil Hammerschlag, director of the University of Miami's shark conservation program, wrote that "it's pretty hard to tell."
Nevertheless, some Twitter users dubbed the hapless fish the "street shark."
The surge worsened in Fort Myers as the day went on. Cameratta said the flooding had only just begun when the clip was taken, but that the waters were "all the way up to our house" by the time the AP reached him by phone Wednesday evening.
He said the fish may have made its way up from nearby Hendry Creek into a retention pond, which then overflowed, spilling the creature into his neighbor's backyard. A visual analysis of nearby property confirmed it matches the physical landmarks in the video.
Leslie Guelcher, a professor of intelligence studies at Mercyhurst University in Erie, Pennsylvania, was among the online sleuths who initially thought the video was fake.
"Don't think this is real. According to the index on the video it was created in June 2010. Someone else posted it at 10 AM as in Fort Myers, but the storm surge wasn't like that at 10 AM," she tweeted Wednesday.
Guelcher acknowledged later, though, that online tools she and others were using to establish the video's origins didn't actually show when the video itself was created, merely when the social media profile of the user was created.
The AP confirmed through the original clip's metadata that it was captured Wednesday morning.
"It makes a bit more sense from a flooding standpoint," she said by email, when informed the fish was spotted near an overflowing pond. "But how on earth would a shark go from the Gulf of Mexico to a retention pond?"
Yannis Papastamatiou, a marine biologist who studies shark behavior at Florida International University, said that most sharks flee shallow bays ahead of hurricanes, possibly tipped off to their arrival by a change in barometric pressure. A shark could have accidentally swum up into the creek, he said, or been washed into it.
"Young bull sharks are common inhabitants of low salinity waters -- rivers, estuaries, subtropical embayments -- and often appear in similar videos in FL water bodies connected to the sea such as coastal canals and ponds," Burgess said. "Assuming the location and date attributes are correct, it is likely this shark was swept shoreward with the rising seas."
Cameratta sent the video to a group chat on WhatsApp on Wednesday morning, according to his friend John Paul Murray, who sent the AP a timestamped screenshot.
"Amazing content," Murray wrote in reply.
------
Associated Press writers Philip Marcelo and Arijeta Lajka in New York contributed to this report.
Average hourly wages among Canadian employees rose to $34.95 on a year-over-year basis in April, a 4.7 per cent increase, according to a Statistics Canada report released Friday morning.
A 4.2-magnitude earthquake was recorded west of Vancouver Island early Friday morning.
Andy Kim's 'Rock Me Gently' is marking a major milestone, as it celebrates its 50th anniversary.
A family of fifth generation farmers from Ituna, Sask. are trying to find answers after discovering several strange objects lying on their land.
Just as she had feared, a restaurant owner from eastern Quebec who visited Montreal had her SUV stolen, but says it was all thanks to the kindness of strangers on the internet — not the police — that she got it back.
Oprah Winfrey said on Thursday evening that she has long played a role in promoting unhealthy and unrealistic diets.
A southwestern Ontario woman has received an $8,400 bill from a hospital in Windsor, Ont., after she refused to put her mother in a nursing home she hated -- and she says she has no intention of paying it.
Toronto police say a man who allegedly attempted to access Drake’s Bridle Path property was taken to hospital on Thursday after an altercation with security guards.
If you're cruising down a highway and realize you have a flat tire, you may want to think twice before stopping to fix it on the side of the road.
A family of fifth generation farmers from Ituna, Sask. are trying to find answers after discovering several strange objects lying on their land.
A Listowel, Ont. man, drafted by the Hamilton Tigercats last week, is also getting looks from the NFL, despite only playing 27 games of football in his life.
A small Ajax dessert shop that recently received a glowing review from celebrity food critic Keith Lee is being forced to move after a zoning complaint was made following the social media influencer’s visit last month.
The Canada Science and Technology Museum is inviting visitors to explore their poop. A new exhibition opens at the Ottawa museum on Friday called, 'Oh Crap! Rethinking human waste.'
The Regina Police Service says it is the first in Saskatchewan and possibly Canada to implement new technology in its detention facility that will offer real-time monitoring of detainees’ vital health metrics.
The stakes have been set for a bet between Vancouver and Edmonton's mayors on who will win Round 2 of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
A grieving mother is hosting a helmet drive in the hopes of protecting children on Manitoba First Nations from a similar tragedy that killed her daughter.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
A P.E.I. lighthouse and a New Brunswick river are being honoured in a Canada Post series.