Hi Gang, it is summer and the silly season and instead of worrying about jobs, our health and climate change it appears that Discovery (which use to be the indicator of interesting things in nature) has gone hillbilly mermaid.
The channel that brings us swamp fishing, gun shows and the like (and I love them) has aired a show that has footage of alleged mermaids. The two hour show features a lot of computer generated “what if” scenarios of how the creatures have evolved and the only evidence that the two former NOAA researchers have is a sound recording that has something unidentifiable with whale and dolphin sounds.
While it may be profitable to sensationalize mermaids and their hunting and evolving underwater parallel to us evolving on land it just doesn’t make sense when presented as it was on television.
The video evidence that we see that is saved till the end of the show (well there is a spooky shot of something swimming in front of what looks like a washing machine window and a webbed aquatic hand slams against the lens) is from a kid’s cellphone where there were some beached whales and dolphins. The kid was allegedly approached by the Navy or somebody and told that he saw a dying seal.
Well fortunately (and conveniently) he claimed to have a cell phone with footage he took and the claim is that since it was some years ago, the Naval agents didn’t think to confiscate his cell phone.
The problems – some of many with this show, are that the video footage of the cell phone is so incredibly good it is obvious that it wasn’t shot with a cell phone. If it were several years old the video quality would have been a lot poorer but that wouldn’t have made for a profitable sale or something to keep repeating on the Discovery channel, right?
There is a scene where the kid pokes this remain of something under what looks like seaweed with a stick, it moves it’s hand, sits up and grabs the kid and screams in mermaid scream talk. That is just too Hollywood.
Towards the end of the show there are words saying that the creature lived in captivity from 2004 till it died something like 2007. Jeeze.
Why is it that we always get these great back stories without proof?
One would think during World War I and II when there was more damage underwater being done than with alleged sonar experiments that we would have seen a lot more mer people washed ashore. There were lots of dead whales and squid but no military odd ball reports of half people looking things and I have talked to a lot of Navy people in my young life. But that is boring and doesn’t sell commercials.
I am like the next person and I love a good entertaining show but these spooky spooky govt conspiracy shows don’t do anything to help people get work – it just gets them to get worked up. Especially when it is backed up by what looks like junk science. These are just my opinions.
Have a great day and tell Aquaman to hug Tusky the Walrus for me.
Jul 16 2012
Kim Isaac Greenblatt
Bad Mermaid video Looks Fake
