BUXTON, N.C. — It started with a Facebook post.
It was posted by a local tackle shop in Buxton, North Carolina, and it told the story of a woman who claimed to have spotted an orca off the coast of the Outer Banks while vacationing with her 10-year-old son.
The woman described the sighting as a “SeaWorld performance” and the pictures went viral.
But then internet sleuths took to Reddit and claimed the pictures were fake and pulled from an old Powerade commercial.
So, we looked into it.
We found that old Powerade commercial. Sure enough, right at the 14-second mark, you see why there was skepticism. The woman’s supposed picture appears to line up perfectly with a frame from the commercial.
The post from the tackle shop has since been taken down.
We reached out to the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries. They responded in a statement, saying, “Our IT departments are working to verify the authenticity of two photos that were shared with us and with the NC Aquariums. Orcas have been photographed off the NC coast. NC waters have an impressive diversity of marine mammals.”
Pictures and videos of a pod of killer whales were, in fact, taken off the Oregon Inlet in 2011.
However, on the Division’s website, they also say killer whales are “…a very rarely seen marine mammal in NC waters, seldom seen on boat trips, even well offshore.”
While we can’t say for certain whether the photos posted on Facebook are fake, there is an obvious resemblance to that old Powerade commercial.
We also reached out to the woman whose son is said to have taken the picture, but we have not heard back at this time.