The locals...
"The horde was becoming more visible, they were profane indignities of everything natural. Fish and man were of different species altogether. They could not mix in a sane world. Once more the tribal monstrosities that gave chase to the tough were not mankind slowly regressed to the sea. These awful things were some dark, malevolent god’s idea of what man might be if made from the meager clay of the deep sea itself. Lamp light luminescent lures dangling over fanged maws. Black eyes the size of tea cups. Tentacles where arms, legs, and mouths aught to be and flippers besides. These beings were not the happenstance of Fiji mermen that Ti had explained to me during his drunken and fantastic story, these were the sewn together horrors of the circus side show come to life. Once more no two of them looked altogether familiar save for their crude stone javelins and necklaces made from the debris of the sea."