I kind of love anything on television that has to do with weird or mystical creature stuff. Vampires, Werewolves and exotic animals totally grab my attention!

So when I heard that the Animal Planet was going to air a show on a possible mermaid sighting, I grabbed the remote and set my DVR.

The two hour long show documentary began with two scientists from NOAA who told the story of how they were investigating beached whales over the course of a few years, beginning in Washington State in 1997. Apparently, the Navy was experimenting with sonar blasts, which killed the whales. Of course, the Navy denied it, but the whales showed evidence of sonar damage on their skin…this is, of course, according to the documentary. Two little boys discovered the beaching, and then the Navy at one point limited the involvement of NOAA…

Which immediately raised suspicion, because it is pretty much NOAA’s job to investigate events like beached whales. On public record was a digital recording that they had taken during the time…they refer to it as “The Bloop” and it contained sounds that were unidentified. They compared it to dolphins, but it wasn’t dolphins – it was much more complex.

The scientists at NOAA decided that they might have stumbled upon an unidentified species.

In the early 2000′s, a beached whale event in South Africa caused the scientists to go there to investigate as well. While they were there, they discovered a great white shark that had eaten something…strange. Along with the strange contents of the shark’s stomach was a puncture near it’s mouth, from which a scientist removed a sting ray barb. The scientists were puzzled by this because great white sharks don’t hunt and eat sting rays!

What they removed from the great white’s stomach shocked and amazed the NOAA scientists – it had a piece of a tail fin, but nothing like a fish’s. It had a collapsible rib cage, a partial bit of skull with a ridged top, and a hip system.

Hips.

Most sea mammals don’t have hips!

The documentary used mostly CGI animation to recreate what they said had happened, and to show viewers the likely scenarios of how ancient humans (who looked like apes) may have become adapted to an aquatic lifestyle and eventually evolved into mermaids.

It was pretty far fetched…but not really, if you believe in evolution and have an imagination.

It was pretty fascinating, and by the end of the show, I began to think that it was entirely possible that mermaids existed.

Until…they showed a “camera phone” recording that the Navy had supposedly not thought to confiscate when they interviewed the two boys who were the first to arrive at the beached whale event in 1997.

It showed the boys walking up to a clump of what looked like seaweed…and then a mermaid jumped up at them.

Really?

They kind of had me going until that video. There were so many things wrong with that part of their story that it almost ruined the show for me.

• Who had a cellular phone with video capabilities in 1997? Let alone, a child of all people?
• In the video, you can hear the sound of the waves on the shore, and the mermaid making a squealing noise…but neither of the boys makes a single sound the entire time – not even to say, “Hey come look at this!” Or, “Look at all of those dead whales!” Not even a “Holy Crap, a freaking mermaid!!” I find it very unbelievable that two boys stumbled across that scene and didn’t make a single sound the entire time…
• Do you really mean to tell me that after the NAVY captured the mermaid, grilled the kids over and over again about “what they saw” that the kids didn’t mention to them, “Oh, we also video taped it.”
• Two little boys never told ANYONE about the video?

Really?!