No, sharks are not attacking swimmers in Lake Michigan

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — And now in news that any Michigander could tell you: Videos posted to social media about a massive shark seen in Lake Michigan are fake.

The TikTok videos, including one that garnered more than 1 million views and 46,200 likes, claim a massive shark has attacked swimmers and killed divers. The social media posts claim a new “Kodiak” shark species has been discovered that lives in freshwater lakes.

“The Kodiak shark was just spotted in Lake Michigan, and it’s terrifying,” one video says.

The video claimed that a group of scuba divers looking for treasure and “abandoned underwater bases built by governments” were attacked by a 70-foot shark. It claims three of the four divers did not make it back to shore.

Another video claims Corewell Health has seen several patients who were attacked by sharks in Lake Michigan. It claims that a team of divers were sent to “eliminate” the shark, but were instead attacked by several sharks that were at least 65 feet long.

The videos, which encourage viewers to share the video in order to gain access to video of the attack, are fake.

A spokesperson for Corewell Health told News 8 it has had no shark attack patients, and a spokesperson for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources said the videos are false.

“There’s no truth to this,” the DNR spokesperson said in an email to News 8.

It’s not the first hoax or urban legend about a shark in the Great Lakes, the Detroit Free Press reports . In a July article, the Detroit Free Press reported there are no sharks in the Great Lakes, which are too cold for sharks to survive, though a bull shark — which can tolerate fresh water — may have gotten close to Lake Michigan through the Mississippi River in 1937.

The Kodiak shark also appears to be a made-up species. Multiple shark databases News 8 searched turned up zero results for it. Plus, a 70-foot shark would be massive: The largest shark is the whale shark, which can get as large as 60 feet, according to the Smithsonian Institution .

Many commentators on the TikTok videos called the story out for being fake. Still, it’s a good reminder that you can’t trust everything you see on online, especially with the growing prevalence of AI, which can be used to create convincing deepfakes and misinformation.

A NewsGuard study found that when users search for news topics on TikTok, almost 20%, or about 1 in 5 , of the videos that popped up contained misinformation.

Researchers found videos with false claims about the 2020 election and COVID-19. Other videos promoted unsafe medical advice, like instructions on how to make a prescription drug at home or how to use herbs to terminate a pregnancy.

In the United Kingdom, the BBC found that TikTok was showing young voters AI-generated videos with election misinformation, with one fake video making it look like a UK politician told voters not to vote for him.

Yet the amount of adults in use TikTok as a news source in the U.S. is growing, the Pew Research Center found . In 2020, 3% of adults said they regularly get news from TikTok; this year that number has grown to 17%. For young people between the ages of 18 to 29, 39% use TikTok for news.

To verify suspicious social media videos, check with trusted news outlets, government agencies or expert organizations like universities, research groups or hospitals. If the only place you’re seeing a piece of information is a TikTok video or two, don’t trust it.

Greg Gogolin, Ph.D., professor and director of cybersecurity and data science at Ferris State University, said you should be careful about trusting anything you see online.

“You do have to be vigilant, perhaps suspicious,” he previously told News 8 . “It’s very difficult to believe anything anymore.”

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