The team wakes up earlier for this episode (or else they realized finally that there clock was stuck) and the latest meeting of “Whatcha got to show?” starts at 9:03 am in the Situation Room.   Although they start the meeting two and a half hours earlier, they are still wearing the same clothes.  Time warp?

The “Whatcha got?” for this sequence is footage of a Mermaid shot off the Great Barrier Reef by a filmmaker who wishes to remain anonymous.  That whooshing sound you just heard is a flag going up the pole so fast that it actually rips itself free and sails up into the high reaches of the moronosphere.

Other potential videos have just as dubious a provenance.  A supposed dash cam video from a deceased patrolman that was found by a guy cleaning out the apartment.   To their credit they don’t quite believe the backstory.

Austin brings us something that is “kinda like a triangle UFO”  At this point I made a quick note as to what to get Austin for Christmas.  A book about Geometry.   I suppose if you make two of the angles of a triangle approach 0 degrees and the other to approach 180 degrees, a line could be considered a triangle.  Sort of.  Thankfully Bill knows about this case…apparently FoF only researches the cases they DON’T undertake.  He tells us that it was created by a filmmaker (see 2^nd paragraph above about the Mermaid “source”)

Larry brings us the Ghost Guardian of Hawaii which will get its own section.

Lake Erie lights of March 2010 are dismissed as too hard to do because there is no frame of reference.  Unlike a triangle of red lights against a black sky.

Jael brings us the Mermaid footage which was shot in 2009 by the anonymous filmmaker who was “testing an underwater camera”  This footage consists mostly of a tail batting up and down as what appears to be a human figure attached to it swims away from the camera.  Chi-Lan, so well-versed in mermaids apparently, says that this is a first, never heard of mermaid videos before etc.  In short, she’s her usual sickeningly excited self.  They all vote for the Mermaid case right then and there.  Course, they knew that at 9:02 am already.

While determining who goes where, Jael brings up that both she and Ben are certified SCUBA divers so they can do the mermaid case…and Austin, our non-certified stunt expert,  doesn’t see any reason why not to go with them.  That’s good, since his contract probably requires that he goes on ONE of the cases and the three for Hawaii had been picked already.

Everyone packs up and shuts the same door the same way again and it’s off to Cairns, Australia.  Jael tells us that even though the filmmaker wants to remain anonymous, they have all the information they need to launch a full investigation.  And they really do.  Type the word Mermaid into YouTube and you’ll solve the case.   But, no, FoF takes the easy way out and goes to Australia.

Ben’s tact is to first do an investigation of the area where it was filmed.  A Reef Hunt he calls it.  If a Ghost Hunt involves looking for Ghosts, a Reef Hunt must involve looking for Reefs and since you’ve got the Great Barrier Reef there, there’s probably as good as a 50/50 chance that they might find it.  Maybe.

The plan is to look for creatures that could be mistaken for a mermaid.  All the while through this discussion they flash us the same footage of the mermaid tail swimming away from us.  If they had only spent a few more minutes searching, they would have found a few more of this guy’s videos and been able to show us all kinds of angles.  But, then, we wouldn’t get to see Australia.

They pull up to Marlin Wharf and charter the Good Ship Floreat under the command of Marcus Oke and head out to sea.  Ben and Jael don their wetsuits and get in the water while our stuntman stays on the boat to watch the sonar and play with the anchor.

In true FoF dramatics, the team can do nothing without a countdown so Ben says “Execute Reef Hunt in 3 – 2 – 1, Dive” which I understand is Reality Show Talk for “let’s jump in the water”

Ben and Jael swim around for a little bit and we see fish swimming, proving that they are probably in the water.  Although with this group I assume nothing any more.  Austin verifies communication and continues to watch sonar while the other two float around for the camera.

He then asks how the location looks compared to the original video.  I was expecting Ben to say something like “Well, this looks like it’s wet, too, so it has to be the place.”  Instead we hear “Termoa grrr mmmmasll  ldd [unintelligible] [unintelligible] mmmff lfmla  Dodge”  I don’t think I could have understood a word he said even without the background music.

Then they see something and the ever-alert Austin runs over to the sonar to verify that there is something down there.  Good man to have covering your back.  Then Austin has the nerve to ask if they are catching what he’s seeing that there’s something down there under the boat.  Well, since Ben brought it up to him in the first place, I’m betting they are quite aware of it.

We don’t really see anything but that’s enough drama for a commercial break, especially when you add the music which is building to a crescendo.  During the lead-in to the commercial, you know, the “Coming up on Fact or Faked, Paranormal Files” sequence where we get a preview of the after-the-commercial segment, there is a shark head that they show in a way such that it looks about the size of a small Dodge Caravan.  It’s going to get exciting I bet!

We’re back with Austin still at the sonar and Ben talking about the object about 30 feet away.   Austin, in a panic, says “Ben, this looks big, what is it!?”  (does he ever release the key on the radio?)  Finally Jael mentions a shark (we all knew this was coming even before the shark’s head shown before the break, right?)  She tells us it’s about four and a half to five feet in length.  I’m also going to get Austin a meter-stick for Christmas.

After their short dive they conclude that there is nothing down there that resembles a mermaid and return to the boat.

Austin says they could be dealing with mistaken identity and remembers his script and mentions that sailors for thousands of years have mistaken the sea cow or dugong for a mermaid.

They weigh anchor and head to the Sydney Aquarium so they can film a live dugong.  A few more classic Sydney shots to prove they are there and then they go to meet Amy Wilkes, the Dugong Expert.  Jael asks her if she’s heard of the “theory” that dugongs have been mistaken for mermaids and, amazingly, the Dugong Expert has.  I wonder what they would have done if she arched her eyebrows and had said “Huh, no, can’t say that I have.”  But she ruins that particular scene by saying that it’s so common an idea that they used the name Mermaid Lagoon.

Just looking at the sea cow lazing through the aquarium would have been enough for me to say “nope, that ain’t what’s in the video” but then this would be a really short episode so they arrange to film it in the water by enticing it with lettuce.

Ben says that although he would “love to jump in this tank and film with the dugongs, the ecosystem here is actually pretty delicate.”  What Ben is really saying is that the built-up BS that FoF has shown us these past many episodes would pollute the water.

Ben will stay up top to guide the camera attached to a pole and Jael and Austin will go into the underwater tunnel to film the other angles.  Hungry for lettuce, the dugong starts it’s swim and the team gets the footage they need.

Minor point but I had a quick look at their camera screen and noticed they were filming at 1643 (4:43 pm).  I bring this up only because the little banner on the screen before they go to the aquarium said 4:53 pm, 10 minutes AFTER when they were filming the dugong.  The time given for the Dugong Test is 5:17 pm.  Since the time appears to be correct relative at least to whether it is afternoon or morning, I have to assume that they changed the clock on the camera to match the time zone.  So, why the impossible discrepancy?  Was the 16 43 just how many minutes they had filmed?

They determine that the swimming motion is very similar and if, by that, they mean that the tail goes up and down then I agree.  But, anatomically speaking, not an exact match.  Well, that much was obvious from the second we saw the dugong.

Having exhausted the obvious (and the audience) the team moves on to the next “theory” that it’s just a woman in a mermaid suit.  Really?  No!  Really?  So, Jael suggests they go back to the Reef and put a woman in a mermaid suit.

Of course, that woman will be Jael, and of course she made her own mermaid suit in a few hours (given the time and date stamps of the various “Tests”)

Ben will get back under the water to film, Jael will don the mermaid costume and swim, and our stunt expert Austin will, well, he’ll act useful on deck.  Oh, well, not quite, he will do the very important counting backward from “3” so that Jael knows when to swim.

At “3” Jael does her swim and, so as to get a good shot of her swimming directly away from the camera, Ben films her from the side.  Way to go Ben!  Jael surfaces and Austin gives a double thumbs-up exclaiming “Good job!”  Since he couldn’t really see what she had done, not having that important vantage point of being behind and below her, I assume the “Good job!” was to congratulate her for not drowning in the mermaid suit.

Jael says it’s very tiring and Austin said that even “from up here” he could see the imprint of her legs.  Well, use a different sort of covering for her legs and I bet that wouldn’t be a problem.  Jael also says it would take a lot of practice and that she was not used to the mono-fin.  That’s understandable, she only did it that once!

They review the “dive” and I must say that Jael must have really been guessing when she cut out her tailfin, looked nothing like the mermaid fin in the original.

Austin brings up the fact that if you had a better costume and someone who had a lot of practice he thought they could make it look almost exact.  Yup.

Then Jael springs the good news on us that there are actually professional mermaids that work there in Australia.  On a totally unrelated topic…does anyone know if cracks in a TV caused by throwing a remote at it will buff out?

Jael gets Hannah (the professional mermaid) on her cell phone and we go back to the Situation Room at 11:25 am with a slightly different angle shot of the building.  Man, I hope they didn’t  blow their entire filming budget getting these extra shots of the building and time logos for us.

Recap after recap and then they get to the professional mermaid bit which seems to completely shatter Chi-Lan’s belief system.  See the forum discussion for Revenant’s link.  You wouldn’t think something like the existence of professional mermaids would be such a startling revelation but apparently it is.

Now we get to see footage of Hannah doing her swim in a suit that she made that-looks-perfect according to Jael.  Yes, perfect except for the gawdy sequins…are those supposed to represent scales?  Maybe if she had been swimming off Three Mile Island.

Since she’s a Professional, she can hold her breath a really, really long time.  Chi-Lan comes to the epiphany that “this is a hoax.”  Yes it is.  In all fairness, the original poster of the videos did not post his “confession” until after this episode was filmed, but the tell-tale signs are all over the place in the number of videos he posted showing the mermaid and also in some of the other ones showing how it was done and showing professional mermaids and mermen doing their thing.

As I said above, apparently they only research the videos they don’t investigate.

Ben then tells us that if mermaids did exist, they would not look like what we see as the classic representation of the beautiful woman with a tail.  Geez, Ben, where were you with this information 28 minutes ago?  He continues to say that humans can’t survive in water that’s colder than 98.6F for very long.  That’s his premise.  His premise is faulty.  If a person is half fish from the waist down, she is not human…sorta like Austin.  He goes on to say that such a beast would need a thicker skin insulation so it would be very blubbery.  (I’m sure many people were blubbering at this point)  Through the magic of CGI we see a lithe mermaid fattened up.

The saltwater would make the skin shrivel by osmosis.  I guess what he's referring to is the absorption of water by the skin making it expand and become wrinkly so really the opposite of shriveling.  So now we get a wrinkled, very bulky mer-thing.  Oh, and hair would only get in the way so haircut time.  Now we have a bald, bulky, wrinkled some-thing.  So, mermaids can’t exist and as Austin says, a debunk-slamdunk.

I was half-expecting the creature to eventually turn into a lion/boar/rabbit/wallaby hybrid.

Discussion of this episode is here.