- >>
- Coronavirus
The Video of Whales Swimming is NOT from Bombay High
A video clip showing giant creatures swimming through clear blue water claims to be from Mumbai. A video of a pod of whales swimming is going viral with a claim that they were spotted near Bombay High and was filmed by Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) employees working at the offshore installation.
Circulated widely, the video shows the giant creatures swimming through clear blue water. A few seconds into the clip, the whales also spout water. The post reads as “Whales spotted off Drilling Rig at Bombay High Oil Field”.
This video is going very viral on Facebook.
Fact Check-
We started our investigation by using a simple keyword search on YouTube which resulted in a video uploaded on 7 July 2019 with the headline “Big whales under ship//joinindefence//indian navy // join in defence.” This means that the video is not recent and has been present on the internet since almost an year.
Next, we started finding whether this video is originally from Oil and Natural Gas Corporation in Mumbai. Bombay High, is an offshore oilfield located off the west coast of Mumbai. The oil operations in the place are run by ONGC. With a further keyword search we found an official statement given to Hindustan Times by ONGC spoke person who said that “It’s heartening to see marine life thriving. However, mobiles are not allowed in ONGC offshore installations. Therefore, this video has not been shot at/near any ONGC offshore installation”.
Next we searched further for this video, and found a report by BBC on 27th August 2019 stating that “A group of humpback whales are seen crossing the Karimunjawa sea, even though Indonesian waters are not part of their annual migration path.” According to the video report “However, Indonesian waters are not part of the humpback whale migration path, which is more commonly found in Australian waters. It is also their annual migration path. Humpback whales generally migrate up to 10,000 km every year from cold waters in Antarctica into warmer waters in Australia.”
Conclusion- Fact Crescendo found the above mentioned post to be False. The viral video clip circulating on social media is not from Bombay High, it is an old clip filmed in Indonesian waters where whales were spotted in the year 2019. The audio of the viral clip is also digitally edited.
