US National Ocean Service says Mermaids do not exist.

[Dave]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18692830

Was everyone as shocked by this news as I was?

[Ursa major]

Seems a bit fishy to me....

[alchemist]

A fishy tail?

[thaddeus6th]

The day after the Americans confirm mermaids don't exist the Europeans confirm the Higgs Boson does

[Vertigo]

The scary thing is what caused them to make the 'annoucement'. People watching a programme on mermaids believed it to be a documentary and then asked the Ocean Service people about them. Truly sad.

[Aun Doorback]

This is a double bluff!

[alchemist]

Originally Posted by Aun Doorback

This is a double bluff!

Damn right. This is National Ocean Service spokeswoman Carol Kavanagh...

[Aun Doorback]

Or maybe even a triple bluff. All I say is, watch those waters!

[Karn Maeshalanadae]

Yet another example of how stupid the general population seems to be, especially here in the U.S. Anyone should realize that mermaids do not exist.


That would almost be like someone watching Clash of the Gods and calling up about the existence of Zeus or the Minotaur.

[Metryq]

During the original broadcast of GILLIGAN'S ISLAND there were viewers who wrote to the US Navy demanding that they do something about those poor castaways.

[hopewrites]

http://press.discovery.com/ekits/mon...s-release.html

well now I want to see this. if its good enough to make people believe they are real...

[purple_kathryn]

Originally Posted by Vertigo

The scary thing is what caused them to make the 'annoucement'. People watching a programme on mermaids believed it to be a documentary and then asked the Ocean Service people about them. Truly sad.

that was my thoughts.


That people were stupid enough to ask in the first place

[Parson]

I watched a bit of this program and for a while I was going "That couldn't be true... Could it?" But they overplayed their hand at the end and it was clearly apparent that this was fictitious documentary. But a little more willingness to believe in conspiracy theories, you know, like the fake moon landing, and you're calling in the feds to check out this new idea. (Sigh!!)

[Vertigo]

Was it a deliberate spoof (probably the wrong word), Parson? In other words was it presented as an April fool style programme?

[Parson]

I can't really answer this Vertigo. It was on the Discovery channel, which has a lot of documentary type stuff. (Also an unfortunate predilection toward stories about Atlantas, UFO's, the Loch Ness Monster and the like.) So the idea that it was a documentary was part of my thinking, but I also kept the door open to hokum. As a guess I would say that they were trying to make people believe that it was a documentary. I might compare it to the radio broadcast of "the War of the Worlds" with its reporting style, rather than story style.