FACT CHECK: This is NOT a New Coral Species found near the Galapagos Islands!

Environmental photography has become a rage among nature lovers around the world enabled by rapidly evolving technology. Photos of natural wonders clicked by users around the world get shared widely on social media. However, some artificial photos developed for creative purposes gets mistaken for an actual entity and gets shared rigorously on social media. Factcrescendo Sri Lanka investigation into one such image revealed that a digitally created 3-Dimensional art work was mistaken to be a real coral structure.

Viral Posts on Social Media

A photo which seemed like a picturesque and unique coral structure was shared on Facebook as seen below, titled “New Species of Coral that has been found near the Galapagos Island”.

Facebook | Archived

Many others had shared this unique image with the same narration as seen below

Fact Check

At first we did a Google Reverse Image search and found a similar image in the website named Deviant Art and the image was posted under the artist name, “batjorge” tagged under the categories of 3D fractal, digital and etc.

Web | Archived

Under the comment section of this image, “batjorge” stated that it is a 3D fractal digital work, done with Mandelbulb 3D software and nothing else. His comments can be viewed here.Archived.

According to the profile of the Spanish artist “batjorge” (Jorge Abalo) he is a Fractal Artists and have been creating many such digital artworks for a while now.

Link | Archived

The Mandelbulb website explaining about their Fractal Rendering software can be viewed as seen below.

Web | Archived

We checked the social media profiles of Jorge Abalo (batjorge) and noticed many similar artworks.

FB | Instagram

What is Fractal Art?

The website fractalfoundation.org defines Fractal as “a never-ending, infinitely complex patterns that are self-similar across different scales”. It also explains that Fractals represent dynamic systems and the nature is full of examples of fractals.

However, Galapagos Islands National Park has been a heaven for deep sea experts and several new deep sea creatures have been found recently including various types of corals as well. First Post

Follow us and stay up-to-date with our latest fact checks.

Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Google News

Conclusion:

From our investigation, it is evident that the photo which is claimed as a new coral species found near the Galapagos Islands, is not a real photograph. Instead the image depicting a coral structure is a 3D fractal artwork done by a Spanish Fractal Artist called “batjorge” (Jorge Abalo) using Mandelbulb 3D, a software dedicated for 3D fractal imaging.

Also Read: This is not the rare Nagaraja flower from the Himalayas; Find out the truth!