Marty collected himself and said, “Beyond the myth and lore regarding merfolk, there have also been countless eyewitness reports of fish-tailed humanoids in our oceans and seas. In fact, there have been more high-publicized sightings of merfolk over the centuries than any other creature unknown to science. In 1493, Christopher Columbus chronicled in his ship’s logbook that he and his crew encountered three mermaids with distinctive human facial features off the coast of what’s now the Dominican Republic. In 1560, a group of Jesuits caught seven merfolk in their fishing nets off the coast of Ceylon, present-day Sri Lanka. The Viceroy of India, a learned physician, dissected the bodies himself before numerous witnesses. In 1603, several farmers of good reputation observed a mermaid off the coast of Wales for more than three hours. A few years later, in 1608, Henry Hudson encountered a mermaid that he described as having flowing black hair, white skin, and the fully developed breasts of a woman. In 1723, a Danish Royal Commission tasked with proving that merfolk didn’t exist ended up discovering a merman near the Faroe Isles. In 1739, newspapers reported that sailors of the English ship Halifax, recently returned from the East Indies, confessed to eating mermaid flesh. In 1830, a group of locals cutting seaweed on the island of Benbecula, off the west coast of Scotland, witnessed what appeared to be a ‘woman in miniature’ swimming with impossible ease and grace in the churning sea. A few days later the creature washed ashore at Culle Bay, where it was witnessed by the entire town and described as having dark hair, tender white flesh, the breasts of a woman, and a lower body like that of a salmon’s, lacking the scales. Three years later, in the Shetland Isles, which consist of about a hundred islands just north of Scotland, an esteemed natural history professor captured a merman, which he described as short-haired and monkey-faced. And in 1890, in the nearby Orkney Isles, hundreds of eyewitnesses reported sightings of a black-headed, white-bodied creature that became known as the Deerness Mermaid. Reports of similar sightings continued throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, though they were increasingly ignored by the major newspapers of the times. The age of science—including the biological sciences—had dawned, and people began to dispute or dismiss what they couldn’t comprehend.”

Marty paused, thinking that was a good place to break. Fat Mike, however, nodded at him encouragingly.

Marty continued: “So what should we make of all these eyewitness reports? Truth? Fiction? Group hysteria? Mistaken identity? Skeptics tend to believe they’re the product of the latter. Identifying animals in water, they argue, is inherently problematic, given that eyewitnesses typically only see a small part of the creature that is not submerged. When you add poor and distant viewing conditions, positively identifying even a known creature such as a human-sized manatee or dugong can prove difficult. A glimpse of a head or flipper or tail just before it dives under the waves—and voila, you have a merfolk.”