Hannah Fraser (born 6 February 1974), known professionally as Hannah Mermaid, is a professional

model A model is an informative representation of an object, person or system. The term originally denoted the Plan_(drawing), plans of a building in late 16th-century English, and derived via French and Italian ultimately from Latin ''modulus'', a mea ...

actress An actor or actress is a person who portrays a Character (arts), character in a performance. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. The analogous Greek ...

dancer Dance is a performing art form consisting of sequences of movement, either improvised or purposefully selected. This movement has aesthetic and often symbolic value. Dance can be categorized and described by its choreography, by its repertoi ...

, and

performer The performing arts are The arts, arts such as music, dance, and drama which are performed for an audience. They are different from the visual arts, which are the use of paint, canvas or various materials to create physical or static art object ...

who specialises in underwater and ocean-oriented

freediving Freediving, free-diving, free diving, breath-hold diving, or skin diving is a form of underwater diving that relies on breath-holding until resurfacing rather than the use of breathing apparatus such as scuba gear. Besides the limits of breath-h ...

performances, often in mermaid

costume Costume is the distinctive style of dress or cosmetic of an individual or group that reflects class, gender, profession, ethnicity, nationality, activity or epoch. In short costume is a cultural visual of the people. The term also was tradition ...

. She is a central figure in modern

mermaiding Mermaiding (also referred to as artistic mermaiding, mermaidry, or artistic mermaid performance) is the practice of wearing, and often swimming in, a costume mermaid tail. In the beginning of the twentieth century mermaiding was sometimes refe ...

and is an ocean ecology activist.

Early life

Fraser grew up in

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

. She made her first mermaid tail at the age of 9, inspired by 1984 film ''Splash''. She began performing as a mermaid in 2003. She has been featured in photo shoots, advertising campaigns and on

film A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere ...

. Her father,

Andy Andy may refer to: People * Andy (given name), including a list of people and fictional characters * Horace Andy (born 1951), Jamaican roots reggae songwriter and singer born Horace Hinds * Katja Andy (1907–2013), German-American pianist and pi ...

, was a founding member of the rock band

Free Free may refer to: Concept * Freedom, having the ability to do something, without having to obey anyone/anything * Freethought, a position that beliefs should be formed only on the basis of logic, reason, and empiricism * Emancipate, to procur ...

when he was just 15. He died in 2015.

Career

Her

marine conservation activism Marine conservation activism is the efforts of non-governmental organizations and individuals to bring about social and political change in the area of marine conservation. Marine conservation is properly conceived as a set of management strategie ...

has included campaigning against the

overfishing Overfishing is the removal of a species of fish (i.e. fishing) from a body of water at a rate greater than that the species can replenish its population naturally (i.e. the overexploitation of the fishery's existing fish stock), resulting in th ...

and culling of

sharks Sharks are a group of elasmobranch fish characterized by a cartilaginous skeleton, five to seven gill slits on the sides of the head, and pectoral fins that are not fused to the head. Modern sharks are classified within the clade Selachimorp ...

dolphins A dolphin is an aquatic mammal within the infraorder Cetacea. Dolphin species belong to the families Delphinidae (the oceanic dolphins), Platanistidae (the Indian river dolphins), Iniidae (the New World river dolphins), Pontoporiidae (t ...

and

whales Whales are a widely distributed and diverse group of fully aquatic placental marine mammals. As an informal and colloquial grouping, they correspond to large members of the infraorder Cetacea, i.e. all cetaceans apart from dolphins and ...

, and against unsustainable fishing practices and

ocean pollution Marine pollution occurs when substances used or spread by humans, such as industrial, agricultural and residential waste, particles, noise, excess carbon dioxide or invasive organisms enter the ocean and cause harmful effects there. The majorit ...

, often in conjunction with

Greenpeace Greenpeace is an independent global campaigning network, founded in Canada in 1971 by Irving Stowe and Dorothy Stowe, immigrant environmental activists from the United States. Greenpeace states its goal is to "ensure the ability of the Earth t ...

. 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 The Taiji dolphin drive hunt is based on driving dolphins and other small cetaceans into a small bay where they can be killed or captured for their meat and for sale to dolphinariums. The new primary killing method is done by cutting the spinal ...

. 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. Also in 2013, she starred in a conservation film, ''Betrayal'', to campaign against the hunting of

humpback whale The humpback whale (''Megaptera novaeangliae'') is a species of baleen whale. It is a rorqual (a member of the family Balaenopteridae) and is the only species in the genus ''Megaptera''. Adults range in length from and weigh up to . The hump ...

s with which she freedived in

Tonga Tonga (, ; ), officially the Kingdom of Tonga ( to, Puleʻanga Fakatuʻi ʻo Tonga), is a Polynesian country and archipelago. The country has 171 islands – of which 45 are inhabited. Its total surface area is about , scattered over in ...

. That same year she night dived while breath-holding at depth with

manta ray Manta rays are large rays belonging to the genus ''Mobula'' (formerly its own genus ''Manta''). The larger species, '' M. birostris'', reaches in width, while the smaller, '' M. alfredi'', reaches . Both have triangular Pectoral fin#AnchPect ...

s in

Kona, Hawaii Kailua-Kona is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Hawaii County, Hawaii, United States. It is also known as Kailua (a name it shares with a community located on the windward side of Oahu), as Kona (a name it shares ...

, to raise awareness of their non-protected status. 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 (shorter name for the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, also known as the Washington Convention) is a multilateral treaty to protect endangered plants and animals from the threats of interna ...

(CITES). The video, played to CITES delegates, is cited as having contributed to manta rays securing worldwide protected status. 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 The great white shark (''Carcharodon carcharias''), also known as the white shark, white pointer, or simply great white, is a species of large mackerel shark which can be found in the coastal surface waters of all the major oceans. It is nota ...

while wearing a mermaid tail but notably had no armour or cage. In 2014, she freedived on a film shoot with tiger sharks, unarmoured and without scuba gear, in order to highlight the

Australian Government The Australian Government, also known as the Commonwealth Government, is the national government of Australia, a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Like other Westminster-style systems of government, the Australian Government i ...

's policy of culling tiger sharks to protect tourists.ideo IDEO () is a design and consulting firm with offices in the U.S., England, Germany, Japan, and China. It was founded in Palo Alto, California, in 1991. The company's 700 staff uses a design thinking approach to design products, services, environ ...

Early life

Career

References

External links