(Original headline: She-devils of the deep )
Fishermen have long been renowned for tall tales but perhaps the tallest of all are those about mermaids.
Mermaid legends are centuries old and have a degree of similarity, irrespective of which country they come from. All depict the creature as half-human, half-fish and sightings are generally said to be ill omens, foretelling bad storms, rough seas and even death on the waves.
With the exception of Mami Wata, the West African mermaid goddess who was said to possess healing powers, most mermaid stories are of fearsome sirens luring men to their watery graves. It's only in the last 50 years that the mermaids' reputation got a romantic makeover thanks to Hollywood and Disney, with films such as The Little Mermaid and Splash.
Older versions of these stories say that mermaids yearn for a soul, which they can only get by marrying a human, hence their stalker-like behaviour with men. Holistic therapist Carina Coen believes she was a mermaid in a past life following an unusual experience. She says: 'I have a hand-painted picture of a dolphin and a mermaid on my wall at home. One night the painting came to life. It was as though the top part of the room became deep sea water and the mermaid floated above me, singing and talking with incredible passion.'
The mermaid told Coen that her mission on Earth was to 'return others to their inner soul life journey' and urged her to help awaken people to the ways they are destroying the seas.
Likely story
While most people will think it a likely story and even Coen admits her encounter seems surreal, she is absolutely convinced her experience was as dramatic as a flesh-and- blood sighting.
The last reported mermaid sighting was in 1947 when newspaper reports told of a fisherman on the Isle of Muck in the Scottish Highlands who said he had seen a mermaid sitting on a lobster pot near the shore combing her hair. Hoaxes have also dented the idea of mermaids being real. The most famous of these was the Fiji mermaid, purportedly found by Japanese fishermen near the Fiji Islands, and brought to the New York-based American Museum in 1842. This ugly creature was found to be a composite of papier m?chˇ, a baby orangutan, a monkey head and bits of different fish. Perhaps the most recent hoax came from Chennai after the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004. The so-called mermaid was once again made up of primate and fish parts.
Fish-human hybrid
Marine biologist Dr Vicki Howe, of Cardiff University, is adamant there are no such things as mermaids.
'There are many strands of evolution, of which fish and mammals are just two,' she says. 'Both humans and fish are vertebrates. However, these are two divergent evolutionary pathways and mammals are warm-blooded whereas fish are cold-blooded. That is a good starting point for refuting the existence of a fish-human hybrid.' It has been suggested that sightings of mermaids may be dugongs, or sea cows, that swim in shallow waters.
'It's nice to think dugongs, that are huge graceful animals with soft smiling faces, could be mistaken for mermaids,' says Howe. 'Sailors on long journeys at sea, working hard with poor diets and plenty of grog, may have resorted to wishful thinking.'
