The tale of a digital mermaid

The above images of an alleged mermaid have been around since the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. An email hoax revealed that this creature was purportedly captured at the Marina beach in Chennai.

The email claimed that the mermaid was caught by fishermen and was being kept at the state museum (Egmore Museum in Chennai) under tight security.

The images went all over the world, causing some minor elation not just in the scientific community but among the believers as well.

Then the matter died down – hardly surprising as the email did warn that it was a top secret matter!

However this April Fools day saw the re-entry of the pictures into our cyber world. Again the message in the email was the same:

"A fabulous news, top secret! Real-life mermaid was caught by fishermen at Marina Beach a few days back. It's now at Egmore Museum under tight security. Pictures attached.''

This time around there were more people conned, so much as – according to media reports - the phones at the Egmore Museum have not stopped ringing and the curator has been flooded with e-mails.

Apparently even scientists were fooled. According to the museum’s chief curator JA Asokan, a prominent scientist from Kochi and the British museum officials had wanted an opportunity to see the mermaid.

Asokan, a marine biologist, dissects the fake photographs of the mermaid:

“In this case, the fish part of the body below waist is three dimensional and
human part above is two dimensional. A clever digital merging”.

So far the clever hoaxer has not owned up.