Viral Video Showing Giant Shark Sparks Megalodon Theories

A video showing an enormous shark circling a boat full of tourists has gone viral recently, sparking theories of a megalodon sighting.

A megalodon is an extinct predator known for its enormous size. It lived 23 million years ago and was as large as 59 feet long. Its disappearance has baffled scientists for many years.

Despite the volume of literature about this creature's extinction, however, some still believe that the giant monster never became extinct at all.

No wonder, when musician Alex Albrecht uploaded the video he had captured during a six-week cruise excursion in the Atlantic Ocean, many people began to think of it as a megalodon sighting.

"Sailed six weeks in the Atlantic saw this big f–king shark," Albrecht wrote in the caption of the TikTok video on Tuesday.

In the said video, one can see the shark's appearance as it swims slowly around the boat. Tourists can be heard screaming in the background, giving the video an ominous and menacing feel. Some of them can be heard crying out, "Oh my god!" and "Woah!" Indeed, it's like a scene from the cult-classic movie "Jaws."

Meanwhile, some curious spectators can be seen in the video clip clamoring near the boat's edge to get a glimpse of the sea creature.

The footage, which was captured from the mast of the boat, has so far garnered over 37 million views on the platform.

The snout of the shark and its gigantic size gives it a similar appearance to a basking shark. Native to the Atlantic Ocean, basking sharks are the second-largest fish and shark, which can grow to up to a size of 12 meters (40 feet).

Some users on the platform identified the creature and said that it was indeed a basking shark.

"It's a basking shark! It's one of three sharks that eat plankton, despite its size it’s completely harmless to humans!" one of them wrote as per the New York Post.

However, some users were simply not convinced that it was a basking shark. Instead, they thought it was a megalodon.

"Yup is definitely the Megalodon!!" a netizen commented.

"I'm just saying no one can say that the megalodon don't [sic] exists when we have only explored 5 percent of the ocean," another user wrote in the comments.