Watching the Water For thousands of years sailors have watched the ocean from the decks of their ships Sometimes creatures from below the water appear at the surface Fish and dolphins leap alongside the ship Whales come up from the depths to breathe In the past sailors worried about sea monsters emerging from the deep too Stories about mysterious beasts were part of sailor folklore so they watched the water wondering and worrying Some sailors claimed to see something else quite surprising in the water humanlike creatures These weren't other sailors who had jumped overboard They had upper bodies like humans but instead of legs they had long scaly fish tails Sailors told many tales about these astonishing creatures They called them mermaids and mermen EARLY MAPS Many early maps weren't created for sailors but for wealthy people as art Cartographers or mapmakers sometimes included odd creatures like sea monsters as decorations on these maps Some of the weird animals were described in what were considered to be science books of that time They were often like actual animals but with a strange twist By the end of the 1600s as knowledge of the oceans increased fewer images of imaginary sea creatures appeared on maps
FACT A IT'S 70 80 90 EQUINOTIALE CAPRICORNO CAPODE NASPERANZA Early cartographers drew sea monsters and mermaids in the oceans on their maps Mer is a prefix that means sea Maid is a word for an unmarried often young woman
More to the Stories Many sailors reported that mermaids swam to the surface and laid on rocks like some kinds of sea creatures do Mermaids were described in stories as admiring their reflections combing their long hair or wearing shells or pearls Some looked like people with tails while others were totally covered with fish scales They were beautiful or ugly Some were said to have green or blue skin Tales of mermaids and mermen sometimes called merfolk or merpeople weren’t only about the creatures themselves Storytellers told of magnificent underwater kingdoms in which these merfolk lived And of course no technology existed hundreds of years ago to disprove the presence of underwater people or underwater buildings in the deepest parts of the ocean MERMAID PEARLS Pearls are beautiful gems found inside mollusks including clams oysters and mussels In ancient Japanese folklore a mermaid’s tears created pearls We now know pearls are formed when outside matter makes its way into a mollusk’s shell and irritates or bothers it in some way The mollusk covers the matter with a shiny material called nacre starting the formation of a pearl As the mollusk adds layers of nacre the pearl grows in size
IT'S A FACT sea lion A mermaid figurehead on a ship’s prow or front was believed to be good luck seal Seals and sea lions are two kinds of ocean animals that crawl up on rocks to sun themselves
