Mermaids on Animal Planet: What’s Myth? What’s Real?
Posted by: Craig Woolheater on May 25th, 2013
When Animal Planet’s “mockumentary” mega-hit, Mermaids: The Body Found aired last spring, 32 million people tuned in. So many people demanded: “Are mermaids real?” that NOAA had to issue an official disclaimer denying their existence. This weekend’s Monster Week sequel: Mermaids: The New Evidence, will probably make the same splash, or televised tsunami.
Mermaids: The Body Found, begins with a horrific mass stranding of whales and dolphins off Washington state. The film’s focus is on the discovery of another beached “body” that appears half-human, half-merperson — a body that is “disappeared” and covered up by the Navy. Who knows if that mermaid discovery is factual? Or if the show’s fascinating glimpse into Aquatic Ape Theory, now gaining prominence in evolutionary science, is true. What we know is real about the Animal Planet show, is that all over the world, military sonar is actually killing all species of whales in rising numbers. And the U.S. Navy has just been given permission by our government to deafen, harass, and “take” (kill) thousands more–if we don’t limit them.
Maybe we’re asking the wrong question by just focusing on whether these haunting CGI merpeople are real or myth. The real question is: Why are we making our oceans too dangerous to sustain all life? That’s the message of the Animal Planet mermaid series. We don’t seem to pay much attention when our whales and dolphins are beaching on our shores because of the lethal military sonar. But we really tune in when half-human sea creatures, so much like us, are also dying.
“Rolling walls of noise,” is what Scientific American calls military sonar. These high-intensity sound vibrations now being tested above 230 Decibels, are so horrifically loud and traumatic, they can rupture living tissues, causing ear bones to shatter and brains to hemorrhage. Cetaceans try to escape this sonic trauma by rising too quickly to the surface. They die of “the bends.”
Reas the rest of the article here.
Co-founder of Cryptomundo in 2005.
I have appeared in or contributed to the following TV programs, documentaries and films:
OLN's Mysterious Encounters: "Caddo Critter", Southern Fried Bigfoot, Travel Channel's Weird Travels: "Bigfoot", History Channel's MonsterQuest: "Swamp Stalker", The Wild Man of the Navidad, Destination America's Monsters and Mysteries in America: Texas Terror - Lake Worth Monster, Animal Planet's Finding Bigfoot: Return to Boggy Creek and Beast of the Bayou.
Since the “Bloop” sound anomaly has been explained, everything about The “Mermaids” mockumentary is myth. I won’t go into the plethora of impossibilities that the depicted merbeings possess as real creatures since I presented some of that in the other “Mermaid” item responses. Modern cetaceans do not suffer with the bends because they are not breathing compressed gas as opposed to human divers. In fact, while under the water, whales are technically not “breathing” at all.
Sonar experimentation by the Navy has impacted marine species but whether or not they cause the stranding and death of whales is speculative at this point. Whales have been documented fleeing sonar testing areas. Whales have been beaching themselves long before sonar was invented and as yet, no definitive reason can really be given to explain this behavior.
I’m in agreement that Naval sonar testing be restricted to safe areas but this scenario may be untenable and at the very least extremely hard to manage and enforce.
Happy memorial day to you all at Cryptomundo and to all of the people who are open minded to the hidden possibilities of hidden creatures
I read Brenda Peterson’s article in full. Her headline is strictly a tease as she immediately changes the subject to saving the world’s ceteceans from the perils of sonar. No comment on that.
However, I take great exception when she writes, “Who knows if that mermaid discovery is factual? Or if the show’s fascinating glimpse into Aquatic Ape Theory, now gaining prominence in evolutionary science, is true.”
Earth to Brenda. There are NO credible scientists on this planet who think anything other than that the Aquatic Ape Theory is total junkscience. Zero. Nada.
lol I saw that that “mermaid” show… what a load of crap… it’s 100% fake. All the video of the “mermaid” are CGI…. really BAD CGI… was so obvious, I couldn’t believe I was watching that nonsense.
That the saddest thing is that people continue to get their knowledge from TV shows, and can’t distinguish between fiction and fact.