This video was filmed using an upside-down camera trick to create the illusion of a lake

  • This article is more than one year old.
  • Published on February 26, 2020 at 09:15
  • 4 min read
  • By AFP Singapore

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A video has been viewed tens of thousands of times in multiple posts on Facebook and Twitter which claim it shows a lake under the sea. The claim is misleading; the video was filmed by a freediver underwater in the Philippines using a camera trick to create the optical illusion of an underwater lake.

The video was published here on Twitter on February 25, 2020.

It has been viewed more than 110,000 times. 

Below is a screenshot of the misleading Twitter post:

Screenshot of misleading Twitter post

The video was also published here and here on Facebook and here and here on Twitter alongside a similar claim.

This claim is misleading; this video was shot underwater off Coron in the Philippines by a freediver but the supposed lake is an illusion created using an upside-down camera trick.

A keyword search found this 12-minute video titled “One Breath Around The World” on the Youtube channel of Guillaume Néry, a multi-record holding French freediver. The clip is a longer version of the same video in the misleading tweet.

Below is a screenshot comparison of the video in the misleading tweet (L) and the video on Néry’s Youtube channel at the five-minute 53-second mark (R):

Screenshot comparison of the video in the misleading tweet and the video on Néry’s Youtube channel, at its five-minute 53-second mark

Néry’s video was also included in this February 4, 2019 article published on the website for Philippines-based lifestyle magazine SPOT.ph. The report's headline reads: “This Jaw-Dropping Video Shows the Philippines Through the Eyes of a French Freediver". It states the video was filmed using an “upside-down camera trick”.

The article states, in part: “The short film, titled One Breath Around the World, was released on February 2 on Facebook and has since earned 1.6 million views and 39,000 shares. Some of the most amazing parts of the video include the limestone formations under Barracuda Lake in Coron, Palawan (2:16), an underwater shot in Coron filmed using an upside-down camera trick (5:50), and shots of Davao del Norte’s Sama-Bajau people, who can hunt underwater for as long as 13 minutes at depths of around 200 feet (6:14 mark).”

Néry also published a similar photo taken underwater off Coron here on his Instagram account.

The same misleading claim was also debunked by Twitter account HoaxEye here on February 25, 2020. 

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