You’ve seen it. Everyone has. You’re scrolling through a feed late at night, and suddenly there’s a grainy, salt-crusted image of something that looks disturbingly like a human torso with a shimmering tail. It stops you. It’s that one specific picture of a real mermaid that seems to resurface every few years like a bad penny or a digital ghost. Usually, the caption is some variation of "Scientists are baffled" or "Found on a remote beach in Florida after a hurricane."
But here’s the thing.
The ocean is big. It’s huge. It’s mostly unexplored. We know more about the surface of Mars than we do about the deepest trenches of our own planet. That massive, dark mystery makes us want to believe that a picture of a real mermaid could actually exist, hidden in the data of a deep-sea submersible or a tourist’s shaky iPhone. We want the world to be more magical than just plastic waste and rising tide levels.
The reality? Most of those photos have a paper trail that leads straight back to a Hollywood makeup studio or a very dedicated taxidermist.
The Feejee Mermaid and the DNA of a Hoax
Before Photoshop, we had P.T. Barnum. He didn’t need pixels; he had stitches.
In the 1840s, Barnum's "Feejee Mermaid" was the original viral sensation. It wasn't a beautiful girl with flowing hair. It was a mummified, grotesque nightmare—the top half of a juvenile monkey sewn onto the back half of a large fish. It was ugly. It was terrifying. People paid good money to see it because the "evidence" was physical. You could stand right in front of it.
That tradition of the "gaff"—a sideshow term for a fake—never really went away. Today, it just moved to Instagram and TikTok.
✨ Don't miss: Elaine Cassidy Movies and TV Shows: Why This Irish Icon Is Still Everywhere
When you look at a modern picture of a real mermaid, you’re often looking at the work of artists like Joel Harlow. Harlow is a legendary makeup effects artist who worked on Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. The mermaids in that movie were practical effects. They were physical sculptures. When photos of those props leaked from the set, they were stripped of their context and shared as "real" discoveries. People saw the high-definition scales and the translucent skin and thought, this is it. It wasn't. It was just really good silicone and paint.
Why Our Brains Fall for the Grainy Photo
Science calls it pareidolia. It’s the same reason you see a face in a grilled cheese sandwich or a man in the moon.
Our brains are hardwired to find human shapes. If a wave hits a rock at a certain angle, or if a manatee swims near the surface with its tail flipped just right, our eyes try to fill in the blanks. Sailors back in the day—Christopher Columbus included—frequently reported seeing mermaids. In his journals from 1493, Columbus noted that they were "not as beautiful as they are painted, although to some extent they have a human appearance in the face."
He was looking at manatees.
Honestly, if you’ve been at sea for months, a 1,200-pound sea cow probably starts looking pretty good. But the "mermaids" of the 15th century and the picture of a real mermaid you see today serve the same purpose: they fill the gaps in our understanding of the deep.
The NOAA Statement Heard 'Round the World
In 2012, something weird happened. The National Ocean Service (part of NOAA) actually had to release an official statement. They titled it "Are Mermaids Real?"
🔗 Read more: Ebonie Smith Movies and TV Shows: The Child Star Who Actually Made It Out Okay
They weren't joking.
The post was a direct response to a "mockumentary" aired by Animal Planet called Mermaids: The Body Found. It was framed like a real scientific investigation. It used CGI that looked just realistic enough to pass on a small screen. It used actors playing "government scientists." Millions of people watched it and believed they were seeing a picture of a real mermaid for the first time in history.
NOAA’s response was blunt: "No evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found."
Yet, the "Aquatic Ape" hypothesis persists. This is the idea that some branch of human ancestors moved back into the water. While it’s a fun plot for a movie, the fossil record is basically a brick wall against it. We have fossils for whales transitioning from land to sea. We have fossils for seals. We have zero fossils for a primate with a fluke.
Spotting the Fake: A Quick Checklist
If you stumble upon a new picture of a real mermaid, use your head before you hit share.
First, look at the lighting. Is the "creature" lit differently than the water around it? Most fakes are composites. The mermaid is lifted from a high-res art gallery and pasted onto a low-res photo of a beach.
💡 You might also like: Eazy-E: The Business Genius and Street Legend Most People Get Wrong
Second, check the edges. Are they blurry? Digital artists often blur the edges of a fake object to hide the "cut" lines.
Third, reverse image search. Basically every "real" mermaid photo can be traced back to:
- A movie set (like Siren or Pirates of the Caribbean).
- The work of a professional "mermaider" (people who wear high-end silicone tails for a living).
- A sculpture by artists like Juan Cabana, who creates modern-day "Feejee mermaids" using real fish skin and bones.
Cabana’s work is particularly famous for being misidentified. He creates "Nerieds" that look decaying and ancient. They look like they washed up after a storm. They are art, not biology.
The Real Magic is Weirder Than Fiction
We don't need a picture of a real mermaid to be amazed by the ocean.
Have you seen a Siphonophore? It’s a colonial organism that looks like a glowing, 150-foot-long rope of neon lights. Or the Barreleye fish, which has a transparent head so it can look through its own skull?
The ocean produces things far more alien than a human with a fish tail. We are obsessed with mermaids because they represent a version of us that can survive where we don't belong. We want to be part of that world.
But for now, every "real" photo is a reminder of our own creativity and our desperate desire to find company in the dark water. If a real one ever does show up, it won't be a grainy JPEG on a conspiracy forum. It’ll be the biggest scientific discovery in the history of the species.
Until then, keep your skepticism high and your reverse image search ready.
Actionable Steps for the Curious
- Audit your sources: If a "discovery" isn't being reported by Reuters, AP, or a major scientific journal like Nature, it’s almost certainly a hoax or a marketing stunt.
- Study the "Aquatic Ape" Theory: If you're interested in the why behind the myth, look into the work of Elaine Morgan. While mostly rejected by mainstream biology, it explains why we find the idea of sea-dwelling humans so compelling.
- Explore Real Deep-Sea Biology: Check out the MBARI (Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute) YouTube channel. They post actual high-definition footage of creatures that look more fantastical than any mermaid.
- Learn to Reverse Search: Right-click any suspicious image in Chrome and select "Search image with Google." This is the fastest way to find the original artist or the movie set the image was stolen from.