Hannah Mermaid | |
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| Born | Hannah Fraser 6 February 1974 |
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| Website | www |
Hannah Fraser (born 6 February 1974), 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]
Fraser grew up in Australia. She made her first mermaid tail at the age of 9, inspired by 1984 film Splash. [13] [14] She began performing as a mermaid in 2003. [2] She has been featured in photo shoots, advertising campaigns and on film. [15] [16] [17]
Her father, Andy, was a founding member of the rock band Free when he was just 15. He died in 2015.
Her marine conservation activism has included campaigning against the overfishing and culling of sharks, dolphins and whales, [10] [18] and against unsustainable fishing practices and ocean pollution, [19] [20] often in conjunction with Greenpeace. [21] [22]
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. [23]
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. [24] [25]
Also in 2013, she starred in a conservation film, Betrayal, to campaign against the hunting of humpback whales with which she freedived in Tonga. [26] [27] That same year she night dived while breath-holding at 30 ft (9.1 m) depth with manta rays in Kona, Hawaii, to raise awareness of their non-protected status. [10] [28] 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). [29] The video, played to CITES delegates, is cited as having contributed to manta rays securing worldwide protected status. [12] [18] [30]
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. [17]
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] [29] [31] [32] [33] The decision to cull was later reversed. [12] [18] 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. [34] [35]
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] [36] [37]
Tanya Streeter is a British-Caymanian-American world champion freediver, inducted into the Women Divers Hall of Fame in March 2000.
Georgia Aquarium is a public aquarium in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. The aquarium exhibits hundreds of species and thousands of animals across its seven major galleries, all of which reside in more than 11 million US gallons (42,000 m3) of water. It was the largest aquarium in the world from its opening in 2005 until 2012 when it was surpassed by the S.E.A. Aquarium in Singapore and the Chimelong Ocean Kingdom in China; the Georgia Aquarium remains the largest aquarium in the United States and the sixth largest in the world.
The Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium, formerly known as the Okinawa Ocean Expo Aquarium, is a public aquarium located within the Ocean Expo Park in Okinawa, Japan. The aquarium's Kuroshio sea tank was the largest aquarium tank in the world until it was surpassed by the Georgia Aquarium in 2005.
Saban's Adventures of the Little Mermaid is an animated series produced by Fuji Television and Saban International Paris in the early 1990s, based on the 1837 Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale "The Little Mermaid".
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Mehgan Heaney-Grier is an American champion freediver, fashion model, actress, conservationist, and TV personality.
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Oceans is a 2009 French nature documentary film directed, produced, co-written, and narrated by Jacques Perrin, with Jacques Cluzaud as co-director. The film, produced in association with the Census of Marine Life, explores the marine species of Earth's five oceans and reflects on the negative aspects of human activity on the environment, with Perrin providing narration.
The giant oceanic manta ray, giant manta ray, or oceanic manta ray is a species of ray in the family Mobulidae and the largest type of ray in the world. It is circumglobal and is typically found in tropical and subtropical waters but can also be found in temperate waters. Until 2017, the species was classified in the genus Manta, along with the smaller reef manta ray. DNA testing revealed that both species are more closely related to rays of the genus Mobula than previously thought. As a result, the giant manta was renamed Mobula birostris to reflect the new classification.
Mermaiding is the practice of wearing, and often swimming in, a costume mermaid tail.
HK-SF Ocean Film Festival is an annual film festival organised by the Ocean Recovery Alliance in collaboration with the San Francisco Ocean Film Festival. Featured films focus on a wide range of ocean-related topics from wildlife and conservation to culture, adventure and oceanic sports. The Hong Kong San Francisco film festival will be run again in April 2013.
Lesley Rochat is a South African marine and shark conservationist, campaigner, wildlife filmmaker, underwater photographer, environmental writer, author, speaker and activist. She founded the non-profit organisation AfriOceans Conservation Alliance in 2003 for which she is the chief executive officer.
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Great Barrier Reef is a three-part BBC documentary series. Narrated by David Attenborough, its three episodes aired over December 2015 and into January 2016. The series was released on DVD and Blu-ray in January 2016.
Shark culling is the deliberate killing of sharks by government authorities, usually in response to one or more shark attacks. The term "shark control" is often used by governments when referring to culls. Shark culling has been criticized by environmentalists, conservationists and animal welfare advocates—they say killing sharks harms the marine ecosystem and is unethical. Government officials often cite public safety as a reason for culling. The impact of culling is also minor compared to bycatch with 50 million sharks caught each year by the commercial fishing industry.
The Save Our Seas Foundation is a philanthropic organization founded in Geneva, Switzerland, on 23 September 2003.
Valerie May Taylor AM is an Australian conservationist, photographer, and filmmaker, and an inaugural member of the diving hall of fame. With her husband Ron Taylor, she made documentaries about sharks, and filmed sequences for films including Jaws (1975).
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Simon J Pierce is a marine biologist and conservationist known for discovering, studying, and protecting large marine animals such as whale sharks and manta rays. He is the co-founder and principal scientist of the Marine Megafauna Foundation.
