Animated Video of a 'Whale' Destroying Ship In an Ocean Goes Viral as Real

This is not a real video but an animated video.

Fact-check: An animated video of a whale hitting and destroying a ship is going viral as a real incident.

(Photo: The Quint)

A video showing a large marine animal attacking and destroying a ship in the middle of a water body is going viral on social media with a claim that this is a real incident that happened in Canada.

• The video is shot from a helicopter, which later falls down after a huge part of the ship hits it.

• The end of the clip shows a shark approaching.

An archive can be seen here.

An archive can be seen here.

(Archives of similar claims can be seen here, here and here.)

We also received a query about this video on our WhatsApp tipline.

Is this incident real?: No, this is an animated clip created by a digital creator, Alexey Patrev.

How did we find out?: We divided the video into multiple keyframes and ran a reverse image search on some of them.

• This led us to YouTube short, uploaded by a channel named 'Aleksey__n'.

• The short was uploaded on 9 March and the caption read 'Meg', referring to one of the biggest, now extinct, sharks Megalodon.

• From the description of the video, we found his Instagram page, which carried the same viral video.

• The bio read 'digital creator' and carried several such animated videos.

• The caption under the video uploaded on Instagram stated that this is animation.

• The page carried other similar animated videos of whale which can be seen here and here.

The video was shared on 9 March 2023.

(Source: Instagram/Screenshot)

• We also discovered that he shared the same video on his Twitter account.

• The tweet carried hashtags around animation, digital art, 3D and Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI).

• This video has ganered over 9 million views on Twitter.

The video was shared on 10 March 2023.

(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)

• We found out that the creator had replied to a user's query stating that it took him two to three weeks to complete this animated work.

This reply can be seen on the animated video uploaded by the creator.

(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)

• We also found another reply stating that the video was created on 3Ds Max, a 3D computer graphics program used for making 3D animations, videos, games and images.

A reply given by the creator on 11 March 2023.

(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)

We have reached out to the creator of this animated video, and the story would be updated once we receive a response.

Conclusion: An animated video of a whale hitting a ship and completely destroying is going viral as a real incident.

In the past, The Quint has debunked another animated video by the same creator, which went viral as a real incident of the Supermoon blocking the sun in the Arctic. The story can be read here.

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