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]
In Atlantic Ocean Mermaid Hannah Fraser, Sea Turtle, and Blue Tang Fish swims with dolphins, turtles, pennant coral fishes, copperband butterflyfishes, blue tang fishes, and fishes on the beach in The Cove 2 (2023) on DVD and Blu-Ray from Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions
Tanya Streeter is a British-Caymanian-American world champion freediver, inducted into the Women Divers Hall of Fame in March 2000.
The tiger shark is the last extant member of the family Galeocerdonidae. It is a large macropredator, with females being capable of attaining a length of over 5 m. Populations are found in many tropical and temperate waters, especially around central Pacific islands. Its name derives from the dark stripes down its body, which resemble a tiger's pattern, but fade as the shark matures.
Georgia Aquarium is a public aquarium in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. It 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 third largest in the world.
A shark net is a submerged section of gillnets placed at beaches designed to intercept large marine animals including sharks, with the aim to reduce the likelihood of shark attacks on swimmers. Shark nets used are gillnets which is a wall of netting that hangs in the water and captures the marine animals by entanglement, however only around 10% of catch is the intended target shark species. The nets in Queensland, Australia, are typically 186m long, set at a depth of 6m, have a mesh size of 500mm and are designed to catch sharks longer than 2m in length. The nets in New South Wales, Australia, are typically 150m long, set on the sea floor, extending approximately 6m up the water column, are designed to catch sharks longer than 2m in length. Shark nets do not create an exclusion zone between sharks and humans, and are not to be confused with shark barriers.
The Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium, formerly known as the Okinawa Ocean Expo Aquarium, is located within the Ocean Expo Park in Okinawa, Japan. It is a member of the Japanese Association of Zoos and Aquariums (JAZA), and was the largest aquarium in the world until it was surpassed by the Georgia Aquarium in 2005. The aquarium has the exhibit, “Encounter the Okinawan Sea”, which reproduces the sea of Okinawa and most of the creatures that live in it. Churaumi was selected as the name of the aquarium by public vote amongst Japanese people: chura means "beautiful" or "graceful" in the Okinawan language, and umi means "ocean" in Japanese.
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".
TigerSharks is an American animated children's television series developed by Rankin/Bass and distributed by Lorimar-Telepictures in 1987. The series involved a team of heroes that could transform into amalgams of human and marine animals and resembled the series ThunderCats and SilverHawks, also developed by Rankin/Bass.
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 strategies for the protection and preservation of ecosystems in oceans and seas. Activists raise public awareness and support for conservation, while pushing governments and corporations to practice sound ocean management, create conservation policy, and enforce existing laws and policy through effective regulation. There are many different kinds of organizations and agencies that work toward these common goals. They all are a part of the growing movement that is ocean conservation. These organizations fight for many causes including stopping pollution, overfishing, whaling and by-catching, and supporting marine protected areas.
A drum line is an unmanned aquatic trap used to lure and capture large sharks using baited hooks. They are typically deployed near popular swimming beaches with the intention of reducing the number of sharks in the vicinity and therefore the probability of shark attack. Drum lines are often used in association with shark nets, which results in shark mortality. However SMART drum lines can be used to move sharks, which greatly reduces shark and bycatch mortality. The use of drum lines has been successful in reducing shark attacks in the areas where they are installed. The topic of shark culling became an international controversy and sparked public demonstrations and vocal opposition, particularly from environmentalists, animal welfare advocates and ocean activists.
Fiona Ayerst is a wildlife photographer based in South Africa notable for underwater photography. She has swum with many species of shark, photographed them, including the macropredator Tiger shark and the massive but tamer whale shark. Her images have won awards in numerous photo competitions. She writes for several magazines, and works as an editor for Beyond Blue magazine. She is a proponent of protecting sharks and ocean environments. Her images have appeared in magazines and newspapers worldwide, such as Time magazine, as well as on magazine covers and Coffee table books featuring wildlife photography. She won South Africa's 2003 Wildlife Photographer of the Year. She gave a TED talk in 2012 titled My journey into water. She is a director of Africa Media.
Jonathan Bird's Blue World is a family-friendly underwater science/adventure television program. The program is hosted by underwater cinematographer Jonathan Bird. This series airs on public television stations in the US. The program is designed for family viewing, and each segment finds Bird trying to unravel a mystery, witness an animal behavior or explore an underwater environment. The first season consisted of 5 half-hour programs filmed in standard definition, and the subsequent seasons were all shot in high-definition. The second and third seasons each won four New England Emmy Awards. The fourth season was nominated for a 2013 National Daytime Emmy Award. The pilot episode from season 1 won a CINE Golden Eagle Award. The program is magazine format with each television episode consisting of 2-3 segments. These segments appear individually on YouTube and the Blue World website as webisodes. There are currently 6 seasons.
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 as 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.
Andrea Marshall is a marine biologist known for wildlife conservation and research on large marine animals like manta rays & whale sharks. Marshall is co-founder and a principal scientist of the Marine Megafauna Foundation, where she leads many of MMF’s projects around the world.
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 committed to protecting the world’s oceans. It was founded in Geneva, Switzerland, on 23 September 2003.
Hanwha Aqua Planet Jeju is an aquarium that opened in 2012 in the Jeju Province, South Korea. It is an aquarium operated by Aqua Planet and is the largest public aquarium in South Korea.
