KEY WORDS: Nereida niger • Drive Hunt • Bycatch • South Korea
It was three months before the annual drive hunt when we received a call about a merman in distress. An American couple saw our staked sign, written in all-caps English and, beneath it, spiky Korean. By the time we reached Saekdal Beach, the sun peeked over the horizon like a cracked eyelid. Rocks glistened, clenched like obsidian fists. The wife greeted us, but the husband wanted to keep filming with his iPhone. “This is Jeju, Day Two,” he said to the camera. “Sarah and I went on a walk and ho boy, you won’t believe what we found—”
The merman lay in the sand with his hands crossed over his chest, like a teenage girl prepared to die of a broken heart. His name was Alto, catalog number A14. He was one of Astra’s mates. He had a silken, hollowed torso and his tail, while long, was a silvered blue, a classic beta male color. Milky tears leaked from his eyes. His lips, tugged upward from the natural curve of his mouth, were crusted yellow.
“He seems so peaceful,” the wife whispered.
Alto’s tail rose, then fell restlessly. Once the sun hit its peak, he’d overheat within hours. His skin, rubber-smooth, had begun to flake. We filled our buckets with seawater. We soaked T-shirts. The husband proffered his own, which had the logo of a roaring tiger, but we told him, “We got this.” A seagull hopped past us, holding a cherry-red Coca- Cola cap in its beak.
Marla, our head researcher, laid out the sling. She signaled us to lift Alto. We lifted him. He rolled over and rolled off the sling, baring a grainy, reddened back. Marla dug a hole underneath his tail flukes and filled it with water for ease of pushing. We pushed Alto. He flopped ineffectually. We urged him to live. We reassured him there’s always next season. We assumed he, as a beta, was lovesick. Betas remained unmated until an alpha position opened up.
Alto peeled open a gummy eyelid. Merrows secrete thick, jellylike tears to blink underwater. His eye swiveled, then settled on us. The iris was luminous instead of the usual dark. The pupil shrank from pain and the sun. He was likely a deep-sea diver. Very few betas are. The merrows who hunt in the deadliest depths are often the strongest swimmers.
“Live,” he said like a sigh, parroting us.[16] “Live.”
Every morning at the breakfast table, over a buffet of sliced whole-wheat bread, gummy sausages and eggs, and little green-capped Yakult drinks, our conversation turned to sex. We discussed courtships, we counted eggs, we sighed about couplings, we were rooting for Bloom and Anchor, we were nervous about Triton’s sperm count, and as always we put our heads together and schemed and plotted and prayed to our respective deities, from God to Goddess to Science, on how to boost the number of females.
It was the summer of 2011. As part of the Merrow Conservation Action Plan (CAP), we’d partnered with the Jeju Marine Research Center to save the eastern black merrow species. After four years of dry breeding seasons, our sponsors’ patience and funding were wearing thin.
We placed Alto, the nineteen-year-old beta, in a lanolin-infused tank to recover. The tank was 20×20×6 feet, which is now an illegal size for merrow tanks, but at the time we used it for transport. In the water, Alto was no longer a shriveled sardine. His hair loosened like curls of ink. His eyes gleamed pale. For a beta, he was a beauty, hauntingly unhappy. Even his merrow smile was mopey. We always warned the interns not to get too close. Don’t be fooled by their appearance, we’d say. They may look human, but they’re still animals.
The merrow who falls in love with a human is a wishful tale. The only recorded incident of this is Fabio, who was captured in Iceland in 1986 as a two-year-old merling, then eventually rescued from Marine World. His rescuers named him Fabio as a joke because of his lush golden locks, but it turned out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. As a merling he’d imprinted on the Marine World trainers. He only wanted to mate with humans. There are clips of him still on YouTube, including one where he sidles up to a diver, a fiftysomething researcher named Melvin Fitzsimmons. Melvin jumps, understandably startled, when Fabio begins to rub against his lower back. Melvin’s research assistant, who filmed this, laughs nervously at 13:27, “There’s his penis,” as Fabio nudges Melvin to the ocean bed. Melvin’s neon flippers flail. Sand billows in generous clouds. Meanwhile Fabio waves his stiff penis like a flag.
Using the VHF system, we tracked the A pod swimming past Beom Isle, about six miles from where Alto was stranded, heading east. Swallows swooped overhead as we loaded Alto’s tank on our research boat and left the facility in a hurry. Merrows swim on average forty miles a day. They can outrace boats, shedding their soft flaky skin every two hours, reducing drag, freeing themselves of anything that could weigh them down.
As we neared Moon Isle, we were forced to slow down. South Korea’s Jeju Island had some of the deadliest currents, whimsically cruel, and we wanted to dampen the engine noise. Below in the tossed, dark waves, streams of silhouettes glided under the surface. The waters churned in a whirlpool of pinkish foam and flakes. Using a pole, we fished out what looked like plastic bags. For once it wasn’t plastic but transparent sheets of skin embedded with little chunks of rosy flesh. Our boat rocked like a lullaby as the merrows below rubbed their scales against each other in a frisky, swirling frenzy.
It was the annual mass scratchathon. We fished more sheddings for samples,[17] which are then tested for industrial toxins, including PCBs, DDT, mercury, and flame retardants.[18] Not all the skins were silver. Some carried a rainbow tint, a sign of breeding potential.
We lowered Alto on a sling. The scratchathon explained the rakes and abrasions we found on him. His tail flicked nervously. Before the sling’s sagging bum could touch the water, Alto twisted his torso and leaped into the ocean. He swam toward the pod, his dorsal fin slicing the waves. Another, much larger male cut off his path. It was Triton, Astra’s primary mate.
As he approached Alto, Triton clicked and whistled. Alto brushed past him, unthinkable for a beta, but he and Triton used to be “kissing pals,” immature merlings who pair up during puberty. They rub and grind against each other, practicing copulation. They bond for life and often one of the merling pair will transition into a female.
Alto and Triton, however, belonged to Astra.[19]
Marla, our leader, was the first to slip into a wetsuit. She bound her blond hair into a fistlike bun and pulled on her hood with a thwack. Loose hair is a risk when swimming with merrows. Alpha mermaids grow their hair long as a sign of authority and like to rip out the hair of perceived rivals.
Every time we swam with the merrows, it was a fresh shock. Merrows are much larger than us. Their skin, brown and rubbery, fades into a ghostly silver underwater. Their wide eyes are more fish than mammal, their tastes more shark than dolphin. They could surround us. They could herd us into a trap. They could grab our ankles and tug us into the darkness.
A dark tail whipped past Marla, who seized the scuba rope out of reflex rather than fright. Astra circled us. She nuzzled her cheek against Marla’s arm, then glided past the boat like a giant stingray, wings spread. She chirped a greeting, and like an orchestra, her pod replied with groans and clanks. We held our breath until our snorkels fell silent, as the last of the bubbles slipped away. Surrounded by the wisps of skin and feces, the clicks, shrieks, and cries, we listened to the merrow songs, reverent and reverberant.
16
Merrows are one of the few “vocal learners” in the animal kingdom, with an unparalleled ability to imitate human speech.
17
Another technique used to collect skin samples, which has proved controversial, is biopsy-darting. A dart with a hollow tip is shot into the side of the merrow. These darts were originally so large, the merrows tended to react violently when they were hit.
18
PCBs, despite being banned in 1979, continue to be linked to infertility in merrows. In 2011 the eastern black merrow species had an infertility rate of 60 percent.
19
Merrows live in social assemblages as pairs or triads consisting of a dominant female, an alpha male, and an immature juvenile or beta male. If the dominant mermaid of a triad dies, all subordinates seize the opportunity to ascend in rank and grow. The alpha male is poised to become female and rapidly changes sex to assume the vacated position, while the beta male completes the breeding pair by turning into a mature male in a short amount of time.