Hannah Mermaid

Hannah Fraser (known professionally as Hannah Mermaid) is a professional model, actress, dancer, and performer who specialises in underwater and ocean-oriented freediving performances, often in mermaid costume.^[1][2][3] She is a central figure in modern mermaiding^{[4][5][6][7][8][9]} and is an ocean ecology activist.^[10][11][12]

Early life

Fraser was born in Chertsey, England^[13] in 1974, and grew up in Australia. She made her first mermaid tail at the age of 9, inspired by 1984 film Splash.^[14][15][16] She began performing as a mermaid in 2003.^[2] She has been featured in photo shoots, advertising campaigns and on film.^{[17][18][19][20]}

Career

Her marine conservation activism has included campaigning against the overfishing and culling of sharks, dolphins and whales,^[10][21] and against unsustainable fishing practices and ocean pollution,^[22][23] often in conjunction with Greenpeace.^[24][25]

She appeared in the ecological documentary The Cove, which won the 2010 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for its portrayal of the Taiji dolphin drive hunt.^[26]

In 2013, she was featured in an underwater fashion shoot with whale sharks in the Philippines, designed to publicise the ecological impact of the shark-finning industry on the shark population.^[27][28]

Also in 2013, she starred in a conservation film, Betrayal, to campaign against the hunting of humpback whales with which she freedived in Tonga.^[29][30] That same year she night dived while breath-holding at 30ft depth with manta rays in Kona, Hawaii, to raise awareness of their non-protected status.^[10][31][32] To highlight her ecological message, Fraser and Shawn Heinrichs released Manta's Last Dance, a video of Fraser's freedive performance with manta rays, just two weeks prior to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).^[33] The video, played to CITES delegates, is cited as having contributed to manta rays securing worldwide protected status.^[12][21][34]

She appeared in the TV documentary film Great White Shark: Beyond the Cage of Fear in 2013, in which she freedived with a mature great white shark while wearing a mermaid tail but notably had no armour or cage.^[19][20]

In 2014, she freedived on a film shoot with tiger sharks, unarmoured and without scuba gear, in order to highlight the Australian Government's policy of culling tiger sharks to protect tourists.^{[11][14][13][33][35][36][37]} The decision to cull was later reversed.^[12][21] Fraser also appeared on the Discovery Channel alongside Sharkanado's Tara Reid, where she was interviewed about her dive with tiger sharks and on 20/20 ABC News.^[38][39]

In 2015 in Valencia, Spain, she delivered a TEDx Talk as part of the United Nations' World Oceans Day in which she explained her role as an ocean ecological activist.^[12][40][41]

References

External links

• Official website