A cabin boy at a ship plays flute and his music attracts a mermaid to the surface, but the cranes aggressively sink their hooks and claws into the water and she tries to escape.
The fisherman rushes to a phonebooth and calls for emergency service, prompting policemen and government officials to examine the already dead mermaid.
[1] Manuela Rosignoli wrote in a 2006 academic paper that Siren uses a theme of duality, represented by the half-human mermaid, that runs through much of Raoul Servais' filmography and which she traces to Belgium's division between Dutch-language Flemish and French-language Walloon culture.
The Flemish Ministry of Culture approached Servais, who was an established figure in Belgian animation and a teacher at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent, with the prospect of making what became Siren.
[5] Siren premiered in 1968 and was shown at film festival in Europe, Asia, North America and Australia, where it received critical acclaim.