Mermay

Day 6: Divers

Stitches had decided to do a sweep of her territory while preparing to go out for her trip. She swam over the sand and rocks and noticed something. A ship was in her territory, and not one of the ones belonging to her friends. Cautiously, she began approaching the ship.

Dark shapes caught her eye, divers. She swam a bit closer with a curious chirp, and one noticed her startling.

Sci had been on a diving expedition with his friends Outer & Space and his brother was steering the boat. To his surprise, a siren was there. He froze, not sure what to do. The creature, a half skeleton monster and half strange fish, circled around him, occasionally giving a curious chirping sound. He stared and then the siren swam right up. They were face to face and he could see the siren's sharp teeth. They observed him a couple minutes before swimming over to observe Outer.

Outer was surprised to see the siren as he knew not many lived around these islands. The siren didn't seem aggressive, only curious, but he kept a close eye on them having heard the stories of curious acting mers and sirens suddenly attacking people. The siren just observed him for a couple minutes before swimming over to his brother. As the siren swam to his brother, he noticed the tattoo on the tail. He pulled out his camera and snapped sever photos of the siren.

Space looked at the siren swimming up. Seeing his brother taking some pictures, he decided to snap a few as well. The siren swam a little ways away after observing him, but continued to stay near until they got back on the boat.

Once they were back at their lab on the island of Choice. "Hey Sci, what's this marking?" Asked Outer, showing a picture of the strange black mark he'd noticed on the siren's tail. "It's an identification mark, they're used in mer and siren studies." Said Sci. "Oh, is this one as well?" Asked Space showing the metal arm plate. "Yeah, those used to be used but it's mostly illegal now." Said Sci. Sci then entered the two markings into the database. "I found some results for each. The metal plate was from a research project nine years ago and they only ever successfully managed to get 3 mers and a siren during it. The tattoo was from an ongoing study on mers being performed by Dr. WingDings from Hopewell." Sci pulled up the articles.

Project Q
The head of the project was Dr. Qiblah from Ebott. The project was shut down around a year after it started due to it being deemed unethical. Mers and Sirens that were captured had a metal plate welded to their upper arms. Luckily, only 4 creatures were captured and all released. However, F-1 is confirmed to have succumbed to an infection caused by the welding of the plate onto their lower back.

Creatures in the project:
F-1        Species: Mer    Top: Humanoid        Tail: Dolphin
G-3    Species: Mer    Top: Cat monster     Tail: Cat Shark
P-10    Species: Mer    Top: Skeleton        Tail: Unidentified
S-9        Species: Siren        Top: Skeleton        Tail: Unidentified

"So the siren we saw was the one labeled S-9 in the article." Said Outer. "It's interesting that they survived considering that the area where the plate was welded on would easily become infected." Said Outer. They then looked at the other article.

    Project Marking
Project Marking's goal is to leave easily identified but harmless tattoos on mers and sirens to study migrations and behavior. Each is given a unique mark, typically on the tail which can be identified by looking through our database. If you see any mer or siren with one of our marks, please message us.

They all looked through the database found the siren they had seen. The mer had been marked around a week ago. They decided to message the scientists to tell them about their encounter.