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Israeli Town Offers Prize for Mermaid Photo

So Brooklyn group sues

by
Sara Ivry
August 25, 2009
This mermaid is Australian.(Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)
This mermaid is Australian.(Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)

Anxious that a $1 million prize for anyone who proves that there’s a mermaid frolicking near the Israeli town of Kiryat Yam “badly and outrageously damages the legendary mermaid legacy,” officials at the Brooklyn-based Mermaid Medical Association, a health center located on Mermaid Avenue, have threatened legal action. According to Yediot Ahronoth , authorities at the medical association sent a letter to Kiryat Yam officials saying the town has 10 days to rescind the prize or they will take their complaint to the International Court of Justice in hopes that the tribunal will intervene on behalf of maintaining the illusion that make-believe fish-women may or may not exist. (The town offered the prize two weeks ago, after several residents and tourists suggested they’d spotted a fish-woman frolicking off its coast. The town also insisted the prize isn’t a tourism gambit, though it allowed that it might attract tourists hoping to snap the mermaid and win the prize.) Though our e.s.p about the International Court is rusty, it seems unlikely the Court will do a thing—between cases on atrocities in Congo and Serbia, the docket in the Hague is rather full.

Sara Ivry is the host of Vox Tablet, Tablet Magazine’s weekly podcast. Follow her on Twitter@saraivry.