A new Netflix documentary series dives into the underwater world of the people who work as professional mermaids. They perform in tanks, in the ocean and in pageants, wearing fins and seashells and coral, suspending reality and oxygen while they do it.
Michelle Mozden won Miss Mermaid Arizona in 2021 — and, yes, that’s a real competition. An attorney by day, she’s performed at the Renaissance Festival, at Atlantis in the Bahamas and was featured in the title sequence for that Netflix documentary.
And it’s no easy feat. She’s a lifelong competitive swimmer with multiple certifications in freediving and open water scuba because, as she said, mermaiding is not for the faint of heart.
Full conversation
MICHELLE MOZDEN: It is a danger art. When you are in a tank, when you are out in the ocean or any kind of environment like that, you are diving down to depth and performing on extended breath holds. So you have to be incredibly comfortable and experienced in the water.
Also, when you're swimming with animals, with sea creatures, other fish, it's important to be aware of your surroundings and understand that you are still in their environment, and you just need to be respectful of the situation of the environment that you're in.
GILGER: So tell us about that. Like, have you swam with fish, sharks, things like that, things that are dangerous?
MOZDEN: Yeah, I have swam with sharks before. They really just mind their own business. They don't want to eat me, but it's still important to be aware of it because animals are unpredictable.
GILGER: So talk about the extended breath holds thing you mentioned. Like I wonder this, because if you watch videos of people doing this, it really seems as if they are breathing underwater, but obviously you're not doing that. How does it work?
MOZDEN: Right, right. So I am free diving level 1 certified. I'm working on a level 2 certification. I think having that sort of background and training lets you know how to do a proper breathe up and lets you understand and explore your own limits, your own capacity, and that way you're able to actually do this safely.
GILGER: Like, how long do you usually hold your breath underwater when you're doing these performances?
MOZDEN: Yeah, so when I'm, it sort of depends on the sets. When I was working at the Arizona Renaissance Festival, they would have hour-long sets, and my standard breath hold would be maybe 1:20 to 1:30 under, and then coming up for about 30 to 45 seconds on top to recover and do another breath up before going down again. But my best dynamic breath hold would, and dynamic means you're moving, you're doing some activity underwater, is a little bit over 2 minutes.
GILGER: I want to also ask about the, I guess the artistic side of this, or like the passionate side of this, because you must really love it to do it as sort of a, it's a profession for you, but sort of a side profession, right? I mean, what does it feel like when you're doing this, when you're in that costume, when you're in the water, especially if you're kind of around fish or sharks or like really in these very realistic environments, right?
MOZDEN: Yeah, yeah. And so maybe I, I think maybe the best way to answer this is to sort of go back. I started off playing in the water, like I was always, you know, wanting to spend every opportunity I could playing whales, playing dolphins, and then eventually mermaids with my friends during the summer. And finally, my parents were just like, we can't keep you out of the water. Let's just do something productive with all of that time, and you're on a swim team now. And I was like, great, this is so much fun.
But I think as you sort of get into that competitive world, the joy sort of, at least in my experience, I think I lost the joy for it. Because when you're training 7,000 yards, you know, twice a day, six days a week, that's exhausting. And you sort of lose sight of, or at least I, I feel like I did, lost sight of what am I doing this for? Who am I doing it for? And eventually I ended up getting a back injury that kept me out of the water for two years.
And I think coming back into the sport with a different mindset and now swimming as an adult, I'm doing it for me. I'm doing it because I enjoy being in the water and I enjoy what that experience has to offer. And I think for me, the appeal of mermaiding, it's really another way to just explore my passion for the water in a different context of relationship. So I, I think it's, it's kind of come full circle for me.
It's, it's play, it's artistic freedom, it's being able to just kind of make fun shapes with your body. The mermaid tails that I like to swim in, have a large, carbon fiber monofin encased inside them. So you can get a lot of power with not a lot of effort, and it's really kind of just the act of being able to slow down, enjoy the scenery around you and do it in a way where you're maybe feeling a little bit magical.
GILGER: A little bit magical. There is something magical about it, right? Like, I wonder that, like if you can kind of give us a peek into the world of this, not just your own experience, but like you won Miss Mermaid Arizona, there are competitions for this. This is a big kind of lucrative industry. Lots of people are involved in this, lots of people could have called themselves merpeople. Tell us a little bit about the broader world that this exists in.
MOZDEN: I originally decided to enter this or to compete in this pageant because I thought it was gonna be a lot more swimming than it actually was. But it was not so much swimming, but it was a really interesting opportunity to be able to connect with all of these other incredible mermaids and merpeople from around the country, and even even the world who have incredible platforms, and just hearing other platforms and seeing the activism on the environmental front that all of these other mermaids are active in.
GILGER: Yeah, you're also an attorney, right? Like this is not your only career, it's sort of a side hustle for you, right? I mean, I wonder, I wonder, is that true for most people who do this as a profession? Like, is it hard to make a full-time living doing this kind of work?
MOZDEN: Absolutely. The concept of a full-time professional mermaid exists for maybe, I, I can count on like, on one hand, the number of people that I know who do this as a full-time career. And it's not, it's not all performance. If you want to do, say, mermaiding as a career, you have multiple revenue streams. You're teaching mermaid classes through like a scuba or free diving certification agency and certifying individuals or instructors to be teachers themselves. You're creating content, you're maybe selling merchandise in addition to performance because it really isn't something that you can do as a full-time performance career.
GILGER: Do you feel as you're performing or as you're kind of practicing or doing this in the costume and in the tank or in the ocean, do you ever feel like you really are this mythical creature that you probably wish existed?
MOZDEN: So I don't, I don't have any delusions about my actual anatomy, but there's a lot of individuals who do perform and who, who like to create what they call a mersona, which is, you know, like the character that you are portraying. And that that was never really like an appeal or a draw for me because my mermaid self is really just kind of me, but in a tail.
So, but it is really, it is fun when you are down there and performing and being able to bring that performance art to starstruck audiences or to children or even even adults who are like, “OK, is she OK? She gonna come up soon?”
GILGER: “Is she gonna come up soon” is right.
MOZDEN: Right, right, if there's, you know, I, I, I really do enjoy bringing that, you know, suspension of reality to the audience so that they can, they can wonder.
