“You may be wondering where do merfolk live then? Given their lack of advanced weaponry, I propose they are forager-scavengers that move from location to location, subsisting on sea grasses and shellfish, carcasses leftover by larger predators, and small fish they hunt opportunistically. However, it’s also possible they group in particular areas for periods of time for central place foraging activities. A home base, if you will. Underwater island caves come to mind as a particularly likely location. These would offer shelter from their landlocked cousins—which would include modern humans—as well as dangerous marine predators, including invertebrates such as poisonous jellyfish.

“So what happened to merfolk populations? Why are the creatures so rare and elusive? One hypothesis is that they’ve gone extinct. When modern humans set out on the Age of Discovery in the fifteenth century, and began to explore remote islands, we may have hunted merfolk to extinction just as we hunted Steller’s sea cows to extinction less than thirty years after first discovering the species. Indeed, the number of recorded merfolk sightings declined significantly in the following centuries, falling to nearly zero today. However, the broad scale hunting necessary to wipe out a species would not have gone undocumented, and unlike with sea cows, no records speak of this happening to merfolk.

“The more likely scenario, if you ask me, is that there hasn’t been a decline in merfolk populations; there’s only been a decline in sightings or, more accurately, reported sightings. In the Age of Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th centuries, there was a new bias in observation and reporting. Science had become the new faith. Pragmatic people no longer spoke of creatures from folklore for fear of being ridiculed, and the editors of scholarly journals refused to publish any references to them. This trend accelerated with industrialization in the 19th and 20th centuries and continues into the present.

“So I ask again: What happened to merfolk populations? Where did the creatures go? I posit they haven’t gone anywhere. They’re where they’ve always been. We’ve just stopped looking for them.”

∆∆∆

Marty woke at 5:30 a.m., pleasantly surprised that he had slept through the night without waking. Sitting up, he recalled dreaming about the Netflix documentary, and his lips twisted in a scowl. “Correction, Fat Mike,” he muttered as he swung his legs out of bed and got up, anxious for the day to begin, “I never stopped looking.”

Chapter 25

Chapter 25

PIP

At 6:30 a.m. Pip stood on the starboard side of the Oannes’ main deck, watching Marty pilot the RIB through the rolling swell toward Demon Island. Dr. Montero, Radhika Fernandez, and Jacqueline DeSilva were also on the small boat, the latter two having decided over breakfast that a hike to the lava tubes would be more interesting than lounging about on the Oannes.

Pip raised her hand in goodbye, unbeknownst to her that she would never see any of them ever again.

Part 4

Part 4