Israel is in the grips of mermaid fever after numerous sightings of the mythical sea creature off its coast.
One town council is taking the reports so seriously that is is offering a $1m (£609,000) reward to anyone who can prove the existence of a mermaid in its waters.
Kiryat Yam municipality, near Haifa, says it has been told of dozens of sightings in the past few months. “Many people are telling us they are sure they’ve seen a mermaid and they are all independent of each other,” said council spokesman Natti Zilberman.
The nautical nymph is only seen in the evening at sunset, according to media reports, drawing crowds of people with cameras hoping for a glimpse. “People say it is half girl, half fish, jumping like a dolphin. It does all kinds of tricks then disappears,” Mr Zilberman said.
Asked whether a dolphin or large fish could be a more rational explanation, he insisted: “They say it is a female figure, it looks like a young girl.”
The council denied its offer of a reward was a publicity stunt, but said it hoped to nurture the mermaid as something which could bring in more tourists.
So, it’s probably just a dolphin, but the local council seem to think it’s a mermaid and plan on cashing in – why don’t they just set up dolphin spotting boat trips?
The Nomura, also known as the Echizen jellyfish, would not look out of place in a Godzilla film. They can weigh up to 200kg and measure up to 2m in diameter.
For the past four summers, they have mysteriously materialised in the Yellow Sea off China and the Korean peninsula before drifting across into the Sea of Japan. Experts expect large numbers to arrive this year – which could spell disaster for Japan’s fishermen.
Six adults can completely destroy a fishing net, as well as poisoning the fish inside, leaving them inedible.
Fishermen are also liable to get stung trying to remove them.
The last time Nomura jellyfish were seen in Japan’s coastal waters was in 2007, fishermen made more than 15,000 complains about damage done to their nets.
The Nomura’s Jellyfish (エチゼンクラゲ echizen kurage, Nemopilema nomurai) is a very large Japanese jellyfish. It is in the same size class as the lion’s mane jellyfish, the largest cnidarian in the world. The width of the Nomura’s Jellyfish are slightly larger than the height of most full grown men.
Growing up to 2 meters (6 feet 7 inches) in diameter and weighing up to 220 kilograms (ca. 450 pounds). Nomura’s Jellyfish live in the waters between China and Japan, primarily centralized in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea (via Wikipedia).
The monsters of the deep are listening, well a new study seems to suggest they are!
The cephalopods can hear you.
The discovery resolves a century-long debate over whether cephalopods, the group of sea creatures that includes octopus, squid, cuttlefish and nautiluses, can hear sounds underwater.
Compared to fish, octopus and squid do not appear to hear particularly well.
But the fact they can hear raises the possibility that these intelligent animals may use sound to catch prey, communicate with one another or listen out for predators.
In the past week the first basking sharks of the summer have been spotted off the Cornish coast. As part of their annual migration they are now arriving in their hundreds
In just a short time, one of the rarest sharks in the world went from swimming in Philippine waters to simmering in coconut milk.
The 13-foot-long (4-meter-long) megamouth shark (pictured), caught on March 30 by mackerel fishers off the city of Donsol, was only the 41st megamouth shark ever found, according to WWF-Philippines.
Fishers brought the odd creature—which died during its capture—to local project manager Elson Aca of WWF, an international conservation nonprofit.
Aca immediately identified it as a megamouth shark and encouraged the fishers not to eat it.
But the draw of the delicacy was too great: The 1,102-pound (500-kilogram) shark was butchered for a shark-meat dish called kinuout.
The megamouth shark species, discovered in 1976 off Oahu, Hawaii, was so bizarre that scientists had to create a new family and genus to classify it. With its giant mouth but tiny teeth, megamouth, like the whale shark, is a filter feeder that preys on tiny animals and appears to be no danger to humans.
Only 40 megamouth sharks, including 7 in the Philippines, have been found since the initial discovery. The shark is so rare that the International Union for Conservation of Nature lists the megamouth species as “data deficient.”
Aquarium staff have unearthed a ‘giant sea’ worm that was attacking coral reef and prize fish.
The 4ft long monster, named Barry, had launched a sustained attack on the reef in a display tank at Newquay’s Blue Reef Aquarium over recent months.
Workers at the Cornwall-based attraction had been left scratching their heads as to why the coral had been left devastated and – in some cases – cut in half.
After staking out the display for several weeks, the last resort was to completely dismantle it, rock by rock.
Halfway through the process the predator was revealed as a four-foot polychaete worm.
The transparent-headed Pacific Barreleye spends much of its time motionless, at more than 2,000 feet (600 meters) beneath the ocean’s surface.
The green lens atop each of the fish’s eyes filters out what little sunlight makes it down from the surface, allowing the fish to focus on the bioluminescence of small jellies or other prey passing overhead.
Then the eyes rotate forward to follow the prey, allowing the fish to home in on its meal.
The 6-inch (15-centimeter) Barreleye (Macropinna microstoma) had been known to science since 1939 – but only from mangled specimens found in fishing nets nets.
Fishers and scientists announced this week the catch, and release, of what is likely the world’s largest known freshwater giant stingray.
The giant stingray, weighing an estimated 550 to 990 pounds (250 to 450 kilograms) was reeled in on January 28, 2009, as part of a National Geographic expedition in Thailand.
The stingray’s body measured 6.6 feet (2 meters) wide by 6.9 feet (2.1) meters long. The tail was missing. If it had been there, the ray’s total length would have been between 14.8 and 16.4 feet (4.5 and 5 meters), estimated University of Nevada Biologist Zeb Hogan.
Hogan was in Thailand searching for giant fish as part of the Megafishes Project—an effort to document Earth’s 20 or so freshwater giants.
The new find gives Hogan hope that the giant stingray, once overfished, may be more abundant than previously thought. And it may confirm the giant stingray as the heavyweight champ of the Megafishes Project.
The eelpout Pachycara cousinsi is one of six new species of deep-sea fish found at depths of 2.8 miles (4.5 kilometers) off the remote Crozet Islands in the Indian Ocean between Antarctica and Africa.
The eelpout has been identified as a new species from just one sample that was caught during a 2005/2006 expedition. The size of the specimen is just over a foot long (41 centimetres) and has strange fleshy lips.
On Tuesday 10th July a Giant Squid was fond washed up on Ocean Beach in Strahan, Tasmania.
It measured 1 meter (3 feet) wide and 8 meters (28 feet) long from the top of its body to the end of its tentacles, and weighed approximately 550 pounds said Genefor Walker-Smith, a zoologist from the Tasmanian Museum.
The giant squid, once believed to be a mythical creature, are deep-ocean dwelling animals that can grow to a tremendous size – recent estimates have put their size to a massive 13 m (43 ft) for females and 10 m (33 ft) for males. The larger Colossal Squid, discovered in 1925 is estimated to be at least 14 m (46 ft) long.
The squid found on Ocean Beach was expected to be taken to the museum, where DNA and other scientific tests would be carried out before it is preserved and possibly put on public display.
