A small boat up close to a set of huge whales near Norway? (PHOTO) Find out the facts…

People are always fascinated about nature and social media users also share unbelievable photos related to nature and its amazing creatures. Even in Sri Lanka, we observe that whale watching has become an attraction among foreign tourists as well as locals.

This is our investigation related to a social media post claiming to be a photo of a small fishing boat up close to a set of huge whales, in the middle of the sea.

Social Media Posts

We detected the below photo shared by a Sri Lankan Facebook user, implying that these were the scenes in which a couple of individuals in a small boat were gazing over a giant set of whales, resembling a mountainous formation. The location was mentioned as Svalbard, Norway.

Facebook | Archived

User comments to these posts can be seen below.

Such posts were viral among Facebook users as well and many had questioned the authenticity of these images.

Fact Check

We did a Google reverse image search and was able to find that this image had been created from combining two separate photos.

The group of giant humpback whales had been captured by a photographer named Scot Methvin. We found the explanation related to the photo, published in Alamy. The location where these whales were photographed was mentioned as Southeast Alaska, USA in 2015 and not near Norway as mentioned in the viral claims.

Alamy Stock Photo explanation is given below.

“ALASKA, USA: Humpback whales bubble net feeding. SPECTACULAR images of humpback whales appearing to resemble a mountain range as they bubble net feed have been captured. The incredible series of pictures show how the thirty-tonne whales dive underwater to hunt their herring supper and then resurface to quickly gobble up their catch before the fish can make an escape. In another shot, a boat of fishermen watch the spectacle. Another image shows a humpback’s spout disappear high into the clouds. This amazing encounter was captured by American artist and photographer, Scott Methvin (58) in South East Alaska. Scott used a Nikon DSLR camera, a brand he has used for over forty years. Scott Methvin / mediadrumworld.com”

Alamy | Archived

We checked the same photo collection further and was able to find the photo which carried the image of couple of fishermen watching over the humpback whales. It’s clear that the fishermen are watching over the feeding whales from a distance as seen below.

Alamy

So, it’s clear that the viral photo had been digitally manipulated, by combining the above two images.

We searched further to find the details regarding the origins of the altered image. The image had resurfaced a number of times in the past and in a fact check done by Snopes, it is clarified that the photographer Scott Methvin himself had in fact made this composite photoshop artwork which he had described as below.

“This is my PHOTOSHOPPED image. Someone took my name off of it. I did it for fun and took two photos and combined them. The (other photographer) grabbed it from a mutual “friend.” The scale is ridiculous and was funny to me, so I made it. It is actually my first PS composite I ever made. Given the viral nature of this image, maybe I should make some more and do a cleaner job.”

The Snopes fact check can be read here. Archived.

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Conclusion

According to our investigation, we were able to find out that the viral social media photo is a digitally manipulated image. The composite image had been created by using 2 different photos taken by the photographer Scott Methvin and the original photos were captured in Southeast Alaska, USA and not near Norway.