Over the past few years, rumors have been circulating in Japan about the existence of giant humanoids in the icy waters of Antarctica, called ningen. And although these rumors are sometimes attributed to the genre of legends, the information itself looks rather curious.
Discovery of whalers
The story began with several posts posted on the Internet on the Japanese forum 2channel with information that a blogger learned from a friend who works for the government's whale research program. This program, called JARPA, was launched in 1987, when Japan, under pressure from the International Whaling Commission, stopped commercial whaling in Antarctic waters. Opponents of JARPA argue that its true goal is to harvest whale meat for Japanese restaurants and supermarkets. Indeed, the Land of the Rising Sun program kills over 800 whales each year in Antarctica and the Northwest Pacific. And so, disguised as scientists, whalers allegedly met huge mermaid-like cetaceans in the southern latitudes.
In November 2007, the editors of the Japanese magazine "My", dedicated to the study of supernatural phenomena, published an article, which contained reflections on the possibility of living in the southern seas of unknown giant creatures. Thus, the problem was recognized.
Cetacean "mermaids"
The word "ningen" itself, translated from Japanese, means "man", and these creatures, as eyewitnesses say, are large fat cetaceans, anatomically similar to humans. In the descriptions of the ningen, a face always appears, instead of legs they have a tail, either a whale, or similar to a mermaid, and in some reports, hands and even hands are also mentioned. Those who are fortunate enough to observe the ningen claim that their length reaches 20-30 meters. The skin of the creatures is almost white in color, it is devoid of pigmentation. Most of the encounters with these giant humanoids seem to take place at night, when they are extremely difficult to photograph. In some pictures, the ningens resemble an iceberg, but when you enlarge the photo, they supposedly can be seen in more detail.
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Photos of the ningen in the Atlantic Ocean and Antarctica
According to one report, the crew of a certain vessel observed from the deck what they initially thought was a foreign submarine. But when the ship approached it, it became clear that this was an irregularly shaped object, and by no means artificial. The team examined a large living creature that quickly disappeared underwater.
Are eyewitnesses ordered to be silent?
Several pictures of the ningen can be found on the Internet. Some of the illustrations reconstructing the appearance of creatures were made by artists from the words of eyewitnesses. Two extremely low quality videos allegedly showing these mysterious Antarctic inhabitants were posted on YouTube. One of the photos shows a ningen taken from a great height in the South Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Namibia. Under water, at shallow depths, the silhouette of a huge mermaid-like carcass is really visible there. In general, experts assess the images published on the Internet as unconvincing. It is possible that high-quality photographs either do not exist at all, or, as some think, the Japanese government is keeping them secret, not wanting to confuse the general public. Proponents of this kind of conspiracy theory also arguethat the government not only itself categorically does not want to disclose any information about the ningen, but also ordered eyewitnesses to be silent.
Of course, it is still too early to draw any definite conclusions. It may well be a deliberate falsification, since the capabilities of the computer program "Photoshop" easily allow you to back up "urban legends" with the most fantastic photographs. But it is possible that the Japanese actually discovered unknown giant creatures in the Antarctic waters. Moreover, they do not have to be humanoids at all, because in the old days people saw similarities with humans, for example, even in the appearance of the manta ray, to which the presence of hands was sometimes attributed. In any case, if the information about the unknown giant cetaceans is confirmed, it will become one of the greatest scientific sensations of the 21st century.