Locals and tourists in the Israeli town of Kiryat Yam have
been flocking to the coast in hopes of glimpsing a creature that most people
believe only exist in fairy tales.
An alleged mermaid, said to resemble a cross between a fish
and a young girl, only appears at sunset. It performs a few tricks for
onlookers before disappearing for the night.
One of the first people to see the mermaid, Shlomo Cohen,
said, "I was with friends when suddenly we saw a woman laying on the sand
in a weird way. At first I thought she was just another sunbather, but when we
approached she jumped into the water and disappeared. We were all in shock
because we saw she had a tail."
The sightings apparently began several months ago.
The town's tourism board is of course delighted with their
newfound fame and local mystery fauna. Taking a cue from the town of Inverness,
Scotland (on the shore of Loch Ness), the Kiryat Yam government has offered a
$1 million reward for the first person to photograph the creature. Town spokesman
Natti Zilberman thinks the reward money is well-spent. "I believe if there
really is a mermaid then so many people will come to Kiryat Yam, a lot more
money will be made than $1 million.”
Of course, if the mermaid does not exist -- perhaps it is a
hoax, an optical illusion, or a simple misperception of a known animal -- then
the town's reward money will remain safe and unclaimed, while the economy
benefits from the influx of tourists vying to get a photo that will leave them
set for life.
It's not clear what people are seeing, though the power of
suggestion and imagination can be strong. Identifying animals in water is
inherently problematic, since eyewitnesses by definition are only seeing a
small part of the creature. When you add in the factor of low light at sunset
and the distances involved, positively identifying even a known creature can be
very difficult -- to say nothing of a mythological one!
Mermaids have long held fascination for seafaring peoples.
There are a few dozen significant historical claims of actual mermaid
sightings. Most of them are clearly myths and legends, such as "true"
stories about lovely young women who married sailors but were later discovered
to be shape-shifting mermaids (such as in the film "Splash").
Other reports date back centuries, and offer no proof or
evidence other than a curious story. For example, a Capt. Richard Whitbourne
claimed he saw a mermaid in Newfoundland's St. James harbor in 1610. Another
story, from 1830 Scotland, claimed that a young boy killed a mermaid by
throwing rocks at it; the creature looked like a child of about 3 or 4, but had
a salmon's tail instead of legs. The villagers supposedly had it a funeral and
buried it in a small coffin.
Hoaxers have worked to satisfy the public's appetite for
mermaids; the fact that none have ever actually been found is only a minor
inconvenience.
The great showman P.T. Barnum introduced a mermaid to
astounded crowd in the 1840s: his infamous "FeeJee Mermaid", was actually
a taxidermy fake. The head and torso of a small monkey was grafted onto the
body and tail of a fish. It was bizarre and strange - --certainly nothing
anyone had seen before — but a far cry from the banners and posters suggesting
a beautiful, half-naked woman.
Other mermaid fakes appeared throughout the centuries. Some
were manatees that had been dressed up to resemble a human form and exhibited
for profit.
Whether the Israeli mermaid sighting is genuine, a hoax, or
an innocent mistake exploited for tourism, the reality of finding a real
mermaid might be different than people imagine, as shown by a song from the
Newfoundland band Great Big Sea, which sings folk-rock versions of traditional
sea shanties. One of their most popular songs, titled "The Mermaid,"
tells of a lonely sailor who courts a mermaid:
"I love the girl with all me heart / But I only like
the upper part / I do not like the tail!"
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