By Amanda Shore

Paul Robertson, a former employee of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), speaks in a two-hour Animal Planet special about his experiences with his research team while they were investigating mass whale beachings around the world. This television program, “Mermaids: The Body Found,” took about five years to complete and gives compelling evidence that suggests that mermaids could be real.

In this program, a sound clip that has been called “the bloop” is played as the first piece of evidence that there is an unknown or new species in the water. Robertson and his team were investigating the mass whale beachings in 2007. When they examined the tissue samples that they took from the whales, they discovered evidence of a SONAR weapon. They believed that this weapon caused the whales to become disoriented. The whales tried to escape the blasts of sound and ended up in waters that were too shallow to support their massive sizes, so they ended up beached.

To try and prove this theory, they pulled up one of their buoys that was recording SONAR activity. It was in this recording that the bloop was discovered. They recognized the sound of another animal mixed in with the sounds of the whales and dolphins. After more closely inspecting it, they discovered that the unknown creature was communicating with them, possibly warning each other to get away.

Later on, there was another mass beaching in South Africa. The researchers in South Africa had recorded similar sounds on their own devices. Robertson and his team traveled there to investigate. There, they were shown the remains of an unknown creature that had been found inside a great white shark. After carefully studying this creature’s remains, these scientists became convinced that it was a mermaid.

Unfortunately, the government confiscated the remains and their research as the team was about to return to the United States. The only thing that they had left was the bloop. Robertson tracked down one of two boys that had reportedly seen a mermaid body on the beach the morning of the first mass whale beaching. He says that he captured the mermaid on his camera phone. Robertson viewed this video as well as a drawing that the boy did after the event. The drawing matched what his team had found.

In addition to all of the scientific evidence that they found, they also looked to history for some evidence. There have been reports of strange spears and daggers found in sea creatures that fishermen have been finding for years. Robertson had found one of these tools in the great white shark. 16th-century drawings show very close matches to what Robertson and his team found. Ancient cave paintings show struggles between humans and mermaids.

Robertson stated in the program that he believes that mermaids do exist but that, unlike one of his colleagues who thinks that the only solution is to find them, he doesn’t want to find the mermaids anymore. He stated that he thinks the mermaids have survived this long because they know how to hide. He talked about how he doesn’t think that humans would be able to coexist with the mermaids without wiping them out. He is still trying to get the testing and development of the SONAR weapon to stop in order to save whales, dolphins and mermaids.

Whether they are mermaids or not, there are definitely mysterious and unknown species in the oceans. Watch “Mermaids: The Body Found” to decide for yourself.