Family's bizarre shark find while swimming in river: 'This is wild'

A family’s “wild” find at the bottom of a river has left others horrified — but not all is as it seems.

A woman took to Facebook last week to share shocking photos of a shark she claims her kids discovered while swimming in front of the family’s holiday home in Michigan in July.

“They started screaming that they saw a shark,” she wrote in a Facebook group dedicated to strange discoveries.

The mum said she didn’t initially believe their claims because it’s a freshwater river, so her cousin dove down to investigate and pulled out a more than two-metre-long shark.

“When my cousin first went down to check it out, she came up and said something like ‘It really is a shark! But I think it’s dead’,” the woman explained.

After closer inspection, the family realised the beast was actually made out of fibreglass with “sharp teeth and all”.

“He was stuck in the sand under the boat lift [ramp],” she said.

“We cleaned him up and strung him up on the tree out front, hoping someone boating by might recognise him. I’d love to know where he came from or how far he travelled.”

Photos show the group of people pulling the shark from the water using a rope before hanging it from a large willow tree.

Social media users believe shark is real

Horrified Facebook users were quick to believe the shark was real, with some saying they initially thought fibreglass was a species.

“I would have assumed it was dead, not fibreglass!” one Facebook user said.

“Not me over here thinking ‘fibreglass shark’ was an actual species that I was trying to google because it looks so real,” another said.

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“This is wild!! But I think we need to discuss the cousin actively diving down to investigate the spotted ‘shark’,” another person wrote.

“That’s hilarious that the kids were yelling about a shark and you didn’t believe them. I wouldn’t have either. So funny. What a cool find though. I bet that’ll be a story to tell for years to come,” someone else said.

“Yep we have bull sharks in our city freshwater river here in Australia,” an Aussie chimed in.

The source of the bizarre discovery has stumped the family who found the shark, as well as thousands of others online, who questioned how it ended up in the water.

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