A professional mermaid has shared how not even terrifying encounters with sharks and a heart-breaking swim with dolphins have dampened her lung-busting passion for exploring the ocean with a tail
Professional mermaid Hannah Fraser felt her calling as a child – and it’s stuck with her despite all the ocean has thrown at her, from menacing great white sharks to tragically doomed dolphins.
“As a kid, I naturally swam with my legs together and felt totally comfortable underwater,” she said. “Even my first stick figure drawings had tails.”
At the age of nine, though, she saw the movie Splash and found her dreams could become reality. “I realised being a mermaid didn’t have to be a fantasy in my head. I could actually embody it on this planet,” says Hannah, who lives between Los Angeles and Costa Rica.
With help from her mother, she turned an orange plastic tablecloth and pillow stuffing into a tail. “I loved it so much that I swam around in my pool in it for months on end until it disintegrated.”
Hannah grew up across Melbourne, Los Angeles and India but always further from the sea than she’d like. So she lived her obsession through art, drawing mermaids, making small sculptures and selling fantasy-themed work as a young adult.
“I made mermaid and fantasy art for 20 years. I was also modelling, costume designing and working as a photographer for models’ portfolios,” she said.
The turning point came in 2002 with an underwater modelling job. “I was hired for an underwater photoshoot, and the imagery that was created showed me that I was born to be in the water,” she says.
“It was the one point where all my passions converged and I became the living example of my artistic dreams.”
She decided then to become a professional mermaid. At that time, there were no ready-made tails available commercially. “I had to create everything from scratch,” she said. After countless hours of trying different techniques, she had her first legit tail in 2003.
“I create high-end art tails, and each one takes more than six months of work to make. There’s a lot of intensive sewing, gluing, and constructing. It’s a labour of love, but worth it in the end. My tails are functional, durable, unique and very beautiful.”
Now with 14 handmade silicone tails and another 15 fabric ones for travel and performance, she swims underwater without an oxygen tank, a wetsuit, or a face mask.
The stunning pictures don’t capture the sheer physical effort of staying underwater. Hannah can hold her breath for up to four minutes and free-dive to depths of more than fifty feet. She makes films and photographs with sharks, whales, dolphins, seals, turtles and rays as part of her conservation work.
“Being a mermaid gives me a first-hand perspective of what is going on in the ocean in different parts of the world,” she says.
“I have swum in the most beautiful pristine locations and also the most polluted waters and rubbish-filled beaches. I have seen sick, beached animals, and I have seen coral reefs dying. To be a mermaid is to be a servant of the sea.”
In 2007 she joined a peaceful paddle-out at Taiji in Japan in the red waters of dolphin cove, where the mammals are butchered each year.
“We held a circle for twenty minutes while the remaining live dolphins squealed and spy-hopped, looking at us and moving towards us as if they knew we were there to help,” she says. “We were unable to free any of them as the cove was roped off by fishermen. Eventually, we had to leave and all of the dolphins were slaughtered.”
Her most frightening jobs include swimming with 14-foot great white sharks off Guadalupe Island, a mission that caused her many sleepless nights.
“I had sweaty palms and nightmares for weeks beforehand,” she said. “But when I took off into the deep blue with these creatures, I was very calm and focused on where I was, what I had to do, and being super conscious of every move that the sharks made.”
One eventually got curious and swam directly at her. “I put my arms out wide and started screaming under the water and swimming towards it.”
Her alarm worked. “I scared off a 14-foot great white shark, so whenever I’m faced with scary situations in life, I remember that and think, I can handle anything,” she says.
For another shoot, she swam with blacktip reef sharks on a shipwreck. “I looked down and realised the divers are all wearing full body chain mail and I’m half naked in a fish suit. That was the moment I realised I might be just a little bit insane.”
When she swam too fast in her sparkly mermaid costume, a curious shark nibbled her tail. The photographer capturing the split-second moment. “It was a misleading photo, though, because the shark looks so cute and friendly, like it was smiling, not biting,” she says.
Hannah has to stay fit and healthy to do the incredibly work she see as a lifestyle rather than a job. She begins each day with breath-hold training, breath control and stretching. She maintains fitness through yoga, breath work and dance, eats a healthy vegan diet, and conditions her body to be calm in an alien environment.
Her workplace is intense: freezing water, powerful currents and sometimes dangerous wildlife.
“A lot of being comfortable underwater is to do with your fear levels, and your surrender to being in a different environment. If you can get into a semi trance-like state, breathing slowly and deeply before entering the water, your skills will increase a lot,” she says.
She has appeared in documentaries and films including The Cove, Mission of Mermaids, Scales, A Mermaid Tail, Great White Shark – Beyond the Cage of Fear, and MerPeople. Alongside her performances at aquariums, festivals, and global events, she leads talks, collaborates with conservation organisations, and runs the Siren Sanctuary Retreat in Costa Rica.
“The ocean is our lifeblood,” she says. “If we damage it with pollution, overfishing, and the destruction of species that hold the wisdom of the sea, the rest of civilisation will inevitably crumble. We can’t survive without the ocean. It’s the womb of the world.”
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