What it’s like to be a mermaid for the day

Gills out, krills out: with the news that merfolk are all the rage again, Helen Coffey heads to Brighton to try out her best Ariel impression

I’m sitting on the side of a training pool, feeling exactly like a beached whale. Well, a beached mermaid. Damp cloth clings unflatteringly to my legs while I attempt to suck in my gut, position my fins attractively and smile for the camera.

Next to me, my tutor for the day, Jasz Vegas, looks effortlessly ethereal. Blue hair flicked back, shimmering waterproof make-up perfectly intact as she strikes a pose with her purple tail – she’s a dark, moody Ariel to my deflated Ursula. Yes, Ms Vegas is a professional mermaid, and I am her hapless student.

“I’d already tried free-diving – this just takes it to the next level,” she tells me of getting into mermaid-ing after our excruciating mini-photoshoot. “I saw someone doing it on Instagram and knew I had to give it a go.”

If you’re new to the mermaid scene, it involves a lot more than just wriggling into a bespoke tail (costing anywhere up to £1,200). Learning to hold your breath for minutes at a time, master a fluid, dolphin-like swimming motion, and manage to open your eyes and smile simultaneously underwater – considerably harder than it sounds – are all essential if you want to be taken seriously as a fish/woman hybrid on the professional stage.

Which Jasz will be doing very soon as a contestant in the Miss Mermaid UK competition. It sounds like a wonderfully skewed version of a beauty pageant, with entrants tasked with swimming underwater for as long as possible; posing for an underwater photoshoot (hence all the smiling); designing a costume that reflects the plight of our oceans; and strutting the catwalk in the more traditional “swimwear” round (although this does at least make slightly more sense for women who spend a lot of time in the water).

First things first, a mermaid has to learn about her fellow sea creatures. The morning sees me get an intense lowdown on the marine life likely to form my personal posse should I ever find myself living Under The Sea for real, with a visit to Sea Life Brighton. After a whirlwind tour in which I meet the resident octopus, stroke a starfish and walk underneath the centre’s brand new feature, an underwater tunnel from where I spot grinning manta rays and brooding sharks, I get up close and personal with the attraction’s two sea turtles.

Lulu and Gulliver, Sea Life Brighton's resident turtles (Sea Life Brighton)

It’s feeding time and their handler shows us how to attract Lulu and Gulliver using a stick topped with a red ball, before shovelling lettuce, broccoli and cucumber into their hungry mouths. Wise, hooded eyes sparkle up at me from a prettily painted face, more giraffe than turtle with its brown dappling, and I feel, if not quite like a mermaid, like an utterly enchanted human being.

All things mer are definitely back in vogue right now thanks to the announcement that a live-action remake of Disney classic, The Little Mermaid, is in the works, and Sea Life Brighton is leaning hard into the zeitgeist with a summer-long Mermaids and Pirates theme. This weekend will see merpeople, including Jasz, diving inside one of the centre’s tanks, plus doing meet-and-greets with the hundreds of enthralled children who have flocked to see them.

Opening your eyes underwater is key to being a mermaid (Jasz Vegas)

If mermaid-ing seems a niche pursuit to get involved with, I quickly realise it’s nothing compared to some of Jasz’s other myriad professions, past and present: close-up magic, burlesque and fire performing all form part of the extensive list. At the moment much of her focus is on living her best mermaid life in preparation for the pageant – and Sea Life Brighton have even stepped in to sponsor her as an entrant.

It’s time to see what she can do in the water and (hopefully) master the art myself. At the local pool, the first step is learning some breathing techniques before we take the plunge.

“Take a deep breath in,” says Jasz, “Then blow out three times – we call them candle-breaths. Then breathe in again.”

The first step is to just hold it as long as possible without pushing myself too far. I find it strangely calming; it’s so quiet without the regular in-out of my noisy, inflating lungs.

“Forty-five seconds, not bad for a first try!” she tells me. It turns out Jasz can hold her breath for minutes at a time, a key skill if you want to perform in tanks as a mermaid without scrambling for the surface like an ungainly guppy every 10 seconds. Much like with freediving, experts also become skilled in knowing how much air to take in depending on how deep they want to go – acting, essentially, as their own flotation device.

Next up it’s the swimming technique, the idea being to create a flowing movement by rolling your body. Arms out, feet together, the move involves sticking out the chest before concaving the stomach. It feels extremely odd to be standing in a shallow pool in the middle of the day, undulating for a very small audience of strangers.

The student and the master (Jasz Vegas)

What felt weird standing up in the pool feels even weirder immersed in water. My feet are connected by a mono-fin to help me get into the groove, and a less-than-glamorous black scuba mask goes over my eyes and nose until I feel bold enough to try opening my eyes underwater (always horrendous from past experience). The first try, I feel exactly like a faulty clothes horse, rocking back and forth on clapped-out, rusty hinges. There is no “fluidity” to speak of, nothing beautiful nor effortless in my awkward motions.

“Great for a first go!” Jasz, ever upbeat, issues my first assessment. She gives me extra pointers – I’m trying to use my legs too much when the movement should be coming from torso and hips – but tells me the main thing is to keep practising. And so I do. Up and down the small pool, sometimes feeling like I’m slipping into the rolling Ariel motion, other times feeling completely out of my depth despite the shallowness of the water.

Being a mermaid on dry land can feel pretty uncomfortable (Sea Life Brighton)

“Shall we get the tails on?” suggests Jasz. Sure, why not. I quickly find out it’s impossible to inject any elegance into it as I roll around poolside like a young seal pup, yanking up the pink and gold tail she’s given me to practise in. But it’s a different story when we’re back in the water. For one thing, the tail propels me more effortlessly, making the action easier. It’s not that though, to be completely honest – it’s the sudden realisation that, hey, I’m a bloody mermaid! Before, I was a 32-year-old woman trying to swim with her legs together and cocking it up. Now, I am a lithe sea creature wriggling seductively along the ocean floor. When Jasz suggests taking off the scuba mask and attempting opening my eyes underwater, I don’t even hesitate. I’m ready for this.

I half expect to bring my 20:20 vision to the underwater realm, this now being where I feel most at home: it is, of course, horrendously blurry and chlorinated. Still, Jasz and I strike some poses while her partner films us, and I even try out a smile that more closely resembles a gurn.

Learning to swim with a tail is no mean feat (Sea Life)

One more glide across the pool and it’s all over – my time as a merwoman is finished. I’m amazed at how quickly I invested in the whole thing, and how muscles I didn’t even know I had seem to have acquired a deep ache – the merlife is more physically demanding than it looks. Yet for all that, I reckon Ariel got it wrong when she started hankering after dry land. Flippering free, wish I could be, part of that world…

Travel essentials

Sea Life Brighton is offering mermaid dive performances from 24-25 August; tickets from £10.50 when booked online.

To find a mermaid instructor in your area, visit mermaidsswimuk.co.uk.