The Kiryat Yam mermaid sightings and the $1 million town reward

Kiryat Yam is a working-class beach town on Haifa Bay, north of Haifa. Its shore is also called Zebulun Beach. Mayor Shmuel Sisso said there were always rumors. But the reports leapt dramatically after a new seafront promenade was finished, around early 2009. By August, dozens of callers had phoned the municipality. Many said they were sure they had seen a mermaid. A mermaid.

The first account came from Shlomo Cohen, a resident of about 60 and a former IDF career soldier. "I was with friends when suddenly we saw a woman laying on the sand in a weird way," he said. "At first I thought she was just another sunbather, but when we approached she jumped into the water and disappeared. We were all in shock because we saw she had a tail." He added: "At least five of us saw it."

Hebrew coverage gave more. The northern, isolated section of the beach. A nude woman, sitting on the dock in a strange manner, gazing at the horizon. Very pale skin. Light-coloured hair. Odd facial features. And a fish tail instead of legs. An unnamed woman told a similar story. She saw a nude woman lying on the water line in a very isolated area. When she got closer, the figure jumped into the water and vanished.

Council spokesman Natti Zilberman summed up the reports. "Half girl, half fish, jumping like a dolphin. It does all kinds of tricks then disappears." Could it be a dolphin, or a large fish? No, he said. It looked like a young girl. And it was only seen in the evening. At sunset.

11 August 2009. The municipality offered US $1 million to anyone who could prove the mermaid existed. A verifiable photograph would do. News outlets around the world carried the story. Crowds with cameras came to the beach at sunset. The council denied it was a publicity stunt, but Zilberman was frank. "I believe if there really is a mermaid, then so many people will come to Kiryat Yam, a lot more money will be made than $1 million."

By December the town had listed 12 dunams of beachfront on eBay for hotel development at $3 million. A mermaid statue by a Hungarian sculptor stood on the promenade.

No photograph ever came. The only field search was made for television. Josh Gates and the Destination Truth team spent a week in Kiryat Yam, filming day and night, above and below the water. One night they saw a human figure dipping in the water, then disappearing underwater. They dived after it. They found nothing. The episode, "Israeli Mermaid," aired on 24 March 2010.

Many treated the reward as tourism marketing. Others pointed to suggestion and optical illusion. Cohen's own first thought had been a sunbather. Karin Kloosterman of Green Prophet joked about a mutant dolphin from Haifa Bay pollution. JTA reported a threat from a Brooklyn group calling itself the Mermaid Medical Association to take the town to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. JTA itself doubted the threat was real. A 2013 video of a "seal" that turns to the camera was widely tied to Kiryat Yam. Commentators called it fake.

The story outlived the reward. In 2018 Keren Ben Rafael's feature film Virgins told of a Kiryat Yam teenager who meets a writer who comes to report on the mermaid sighting. It premiered at Tribeca. The $1 million was never claimed.