'What jumped?' Man's mysterious creature find on old VHS sparks debate
A video has resurfaced from the 1990s and has bewildered people on Tiktok after racking up more than a million views.
The clip posted to TikTok with the caption “what jumped,” has stumped viewers and sparked heated debate.
“Doesn’t look like a whale,” the poster, a fisherman from the US, wrote alongside the video which he claimed came from his dad’s “1990 tuna VHS tapes.” He later said it was shot from a 40ft (12m) fishing vessel.
The footage reveals a blue sky and sparkling ocean off the New England coast before something jumps from the deep and splashes back down.
Unknown 25ft sea creature sets off war of words
The mystery at Cashes Ledge, an underwater mountain range 130 kilometres off the coast of Massachusetts, has ignited a fiery dispute between TikTokers. It began when someone suggested that the questionable shape was actually two dolphins.
“It’s bottlenose dolphins,” they said. “Two of them jumped at the same time.” And plenty of people agreed.
“Tails are sideways, so dolphins,” one person wrote. “Those are 100 per cent two dolphins after watching it for a second time,” another added.
“You can see the node of the second and the first dolphin turns so the tail is vertical,” someone else said. While another suggests it was a larger pod. “If you save the video and go frame by frame, I actually think it’s three dolphins,” they wrote. “Two jump out high but one barely leaves the water as the others go back in.”
But the poster, a professional fisherman who claims the creature was 25ft long, has slammed the suggestion of dolphins.
“I never thought some people would say dolphins,” he wrote in the comments. “That’s foolish [and] really shows how clueless people are. I’ve never seen a 25ft dolphin before. If you see two dolphins, I know 100 per cent you have never even been out commercial fishing in your life.
While any ideas of a whale sighting have been shot down.
“Doesn’t look like a whale to me,” Adelaide Deddan, a PhD candidate researching the migration of whales at the University of NSW told Yahoo News Australia. “Unfortunately I don’t think I’d be able to say confidently what that is without any other footage.”
Jaws resurfaces in 30 year old tape
As it turns out the fisherman behind the video has his own theory. “It’s a basking shark, get a grip,” he wrote online, adding that his dad had “caught hundreds of those gummers in the nets at Cashes.”
Some were quick to side with the TikToker. “100 per cent I think basking but I’ve never seen them jump before,” one person wrote. “It’s got the same shape as a basking shark and basking sharks always jump.” another added.
While someone else was “convinced” that it was a tiger or a great white shark. “Great whites are known to jump out of water to catch their prey,” they said.
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