Ri

Along the coastal waters of Papua New Guinea, and particularly in the waters around New Ireland province, fishermen and coastal communities have long reported encounters with creatures they call the Ri, described as beings that appear partly human and partly fish. The Ri are said to surface near fishing canoes, observe the fishermen with apparent intelligence, and then slip beneath the waves. They are not described as threatening but rather as curious, sometimes even communicative, watching human activity with an awareness that seems to exceed that of any known marine animal.

The Ri tradition gained significant attention in the cryptozoological community when scientist and author Roy Wagner conducted anthropological fieldwork in New Ireland in the 1980s. Wagner documented Ri accounts from multiple communities and found the descriptions notably consistent. Witnesses described creatures with human-like upper bodies and fish-like lower portions, with smooth dark skin, large dark eyes, and limbs that terminated in fins rather than hands and feet. The creatures were said to breathe air, surfacing regularly, and to travel in small groups. Wagner took the reports seriously enough to organize a dedicated research expedition in 1983, which he described in his paper The Ri: Unidentified Aquatic Animals of New Ireland, Papua New Guinea.

Wagner's team spent time in the waters of New Ireland specifically searching for the Ri, interviewing witnesses at length and making night observations from canoes. The expedition did not produce a definitive specimen but did generate compelling witness testimony from individuals with no apparent motivation to fabricate. Some observers suggested that the Ri might represent an unknown population of dugongs behaving in unusual ways, given that dugongs are marine mammals known to local people by a different name and are distributed throughout the region's coastal waters.

The dugong hypothesis has both supporters and detractors. Dugongs are air-breathing marine mammals that can reach 10 feet in length, and nursing females cradling their young partially above the water may have contributed to mermaid legends worldwide. However, witnesses who were familiar with dugongs insisted the Ri was distinctly different in appearance and behavior. The debate has never been definitively resolved. The Ri joins a global tradition of mermaid-like entities from cultures with intimate connections to the sea, from European sirens to the Japanese ningyo, and stands as one of the more carefully documented examples of a semi-aquatic humanoid cryptid from the Pacific.