Humans have always been fascinated and terrified by the ocean. Stories of sea-monsters can even be found in places that have been landlocked for ages. One of the creatures these stories bring up is the mermaid – half-human and half-fish, it was said to inhabit the mysterious blue depths. Sometimes they were benevolent and aided men who were lost at sea. Other instances have them actually cause the shipwrecks and drag the unlucky humans down to their watery graves.

The earliest recorded tales come from Assyria and date back to around 1000 BC, but there are depictions of mermaids that could possibly be older. The Karoo Desert in South Africa is home to a series of caves that were inhabited by humans thousands of years ago. Paintings on the walls record strange fish-tailed humanoids and the legends of local bushmen called Khoi San tell of strange and evil water spirits that make their home in the mountain pools nearby. These spirits sometimes take the form of beautiful women, luring and drowning anyone who dares tread their territory.

The legends are interesting and date back thousands of years, but are they anything more than just tales? Are mermaids just the product of fertile imagination, spurred on by something we could never achieve – dominion both on land and below the waves?

Taking into account the possibility of alien species visiting Earth for thousands and thousands of years, it stands to reason that some of these extraterrestrials could have been aquatic creatures. After all, life tends to colonize all environments.

We know very little about what our oceans hold. Recent advances in satellite imagery have shown undersea mountain ranges that we had no idea were there. In fact, more people have visited outer space than the Mariana Trench, the deepest point in the Pacific. Every deep-sea expedition discovers previously unknown species of animals. Many more are yet to be discovered.

Not all UFOs are restricted to air travel. When an unidentified object continues its journey underwater it becomes an unidentified submerged object or USO. They are not as well-known as UFOs but there are plenty reports about massive spacecraft disappearing into and taking off from the oceans.

If the frequency of UFO reports is to be taken as a measurement of the aliens’ interest in our planet and if we can consider their little or no contact policy evidence of their secrecy, then it seems logical that their bases of operation would be located somewhere we couldn’t easily reach. This theory is about as accepted by mainstream science as any other involving alien lifeforms on Earth.

Although sightings have been reported in recent years, many of them tend to be disproved and  as always, officials dismiss the possibility of mermaids being real. Following a 2012 fiction documentary made by Animal Planet, the National Ocean Service ( a branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) made an unusual statement, saying that “no evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found.” Issues that belong entirely in the realm of sci-fi are not usually addressed by state agencies but let’s not grasp at straws here.

Although the subject of mermaids captures the attention of many of us, hard evidence is hard to come by. But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.