By Tim Binnall
A pair of friends walking along Britain's River Thames could not believe their eyes when they spotted what appeared to be a shark swimming in the iconic waterway. The wild sighting reportedly occurred earlier this week as Olivia Kaliszewska and Charlotte Webb were crossing the Hammersmith Bridge in London. To their profound surprise, when they looked down, they caught sight of a peculiar shape resembling a fin that had popped out of the water. Fortunately, Webb managed to capture footage of the odd form and subsequently posted it online, where it has unsurprisingly sparked a debate as to what the two friends had seen.
Webb believes that the fin belonged to a five-foot-long tope shark, that are known to live in the Thames estuary approximately forty miles away. That said, in a testament to the uncertainty surrounding the sighting, fellow witness Kaliszewska was skeptical of that assessment and joked that it could have been an alligator. Similarly split are experts in England as the Port of London Authority told the BBC that it was "unlikely that any sharks would swim that far upstream." Meanwhile, a spokesperson with the London Wildlife Trust agreed with Webb's tope theory and marveled at the duo's "amazing and uncommon sighting of a rare and endangered fish." What do you think the duo filmed swimming in the river? Weigh in with your thoughts at the C2C Facebook page.