On DSC CH last night there was a documentary that had me going for a bit. It concerned a navy sonar “accident” that beached a pod of whales on a beach in South Africa. Supposedly, a couple brothers, young teenagers, got to the beach and found, beside one of the whales, a… thing. It looked like a dead person but was too big. They neared it and saw webbed hands and a big head. Took some cell phone video. Ran off when it twitched.
Enter the marine biologists, angry about the whale beaching and gathering evidence to charge the navy. They find this thing, after it’s been laying there awhile decaying. They get what they estimate to be about 30% of the body.
It’s got a paddle dorsal, like a manatee, but there are bones in it. Like a hand. They reconstruct the skull remains and find it’s humanoid, but way bigger, and has an echo-location chamber in the top, and a ridge. They begin to make the reluctant conclusion that it’s very possibly an aquatic primate. Can it be?
They also speak about odd things found sticking in Blue Fin tuna and other fish the locals catch. Ray and skate barbs, but with vegetative matter wrapped around the dull end. One scientist thinks: Tools.
They find out the navy had tried to cover up a lot of this. At a few points a blacked-out ex navy guy confesses to having been there when one of the things was captured, and kept alive for a time. He claims to have felt it was morally wrong, what they were doing, all along, but did it anyhow, following orders.
The marine biologists have their research “confiscated” in a bureaucratic strong arm move, part of a navy coverup perhaps, but they retain their own sonar and underwater microphone recordings, which have a sound in it not dolphin, not whale, but unidentified. They now wonder if it’s not this aquatic ape thing.
The documentary is full of postulation, as you can imagine. There are beautifully rendered CGI sections showing what an aquatic primate might have been like, how it may have lived half a million years ago, and so on. They make the point that cetaceans had once been land animals. They returned to the sea. Why could a primate not have done the same?
The scientists in the documentary discuss all this calmly, rationally, and usually facing the camera a bit nervously. Eventually they track down the kids who found the first one, and turns out one still has the cell phone video on his phone. They watch it. It’s interesting…
…and then it simply spoils the whole illusion for me by having the thing rise up and swat at the kids, who run.
They took it just a step too far, the dumb asses. Why it was presented as a documentary I don’t know. Only at the very end, during credit roll, is there a hint it’s fictional.
Disgusted me no end.
What they hell, y’know? BLAIR WITCH science is bullshit. I don’t mind speculation, it’s liberating and often leads to good ideas, but it should be labeled as such.
Yes, Orson Welles and Mercury Theater and THE WAR OF THE WORLDS radio broadcast comes to mind. Sure, that’s a valid form of fiction; Poe’s “The Balloon Hoax” or Machen’s “The Angel of Mons” are among many literary examples.
It’s the venue, in this case. It’s showcased on The Discovery Channel, which is known for science-based documentaries. I suppose that only strengthens the hoax’s chances, and so provides a perfect platform, but there is something disingenuous about the whole thing. One does not expect to find hoax in one’s math text.
There is, I admit, an antic side of me that appreciates the cream of the jest here, and is smiling about it. Caveat emptor, after all. For a brief time I bought it, then they tried a tad too hard and I got my investment of credulity back. What I did not get back was my time. Yes, it was entertaining in its way, but I did not have the choice to be entertained. (I would have read some Gillian Flynn.) Instead I thought I was being educated, hearing about something amazing I’d not heard about before. And therein lies my response, layered as it may be.
Anyway, heads up. MERMAID: THE BODY FOUND is a hoax. It’s decent diversion but it’s fictional. Well done but acted. None of it happened. A good story well told but it has no place on a science channel or in a textbook context.
Unless we’re studying gullibility and media deception.
/// /// ///