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.
$1 million reward
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”).
Watch the two videos below. The second video zoomed in and analysed what is seen in the first. Let us know what you think.