Taffy Brown has a hobby a little more unique than most.
For three years she has frequently donned an iridescent mermaid tail to swim in the secluded waters of the southern Great Barrier Reef.
Initially, fear of judgement meant her weekend trips were done in secret with her partner — but when she met one of her own kind, it brought her out of her shell.
"I was swimming around the Keppel islands, like diving at the observatory or Monkey Beach but basically anywhere that I could get to with our private boat — I'd jump in with my tail instead of my flippers," she said.
"I can't get over how much people love it and no-one is making fun of me, which is what I was scared of."
Olivia Turner's mermaid name is Elena and, with just a swish of a tail, she and Ms Brown became fast friends.
"It's nice to have someone I can see in person and we can talk about things and make things together — it's a really nice social aspect," Ms Turner said.
The pair are avid mermaiders and regularly don monofins — a single flipper with a material tail over the top — to mimic the appearance of the mythical creatures.
Mermaid mania
Ms Turner's obsession began in high school, when she discovered practising mermaids on social media and fell in love with an online tail-maker's design.
"H2O, Aquamarine and the Little Mermaid were really big aspects of my childhood. I grew up on them religiously."
Ms Brown said she thought the resurgence of H2O on streaming service Netflix, as well as clips circulating on TikTok, added to the recent popularity of mermaids.
"I grew up on H2O, so that's definitely part of why I love mermaids so much.
Ms Brown estimates there are about five mermaids in the central Queensland community.
Knock-off tails a bit fishy
But it's not all riding waves for the niche industry, with safety experts long condemning the costumes because of the risk of drowning.
Some public pools ban mermaids.
She said cheap, knock-off tails that were poor quality also increased the risk of drowning.
"People will use unsafe monofins that are very poorly made, or they'll use individual flippers in the tail that can get caught up in the fabric, which is just dangerous."
Swimming risk
Royal Life Saving Queensland's Beverley Newton said children should only use monofins or tails if they were actively supervised by adults, in controlled environments like swimming pools, as well as being confident, strong swimmers.
"The main risk is that they band or tie the legs together, so with that is the lack of ability for a child especially to become upright and get the balance and support themselves to get up to the surface of the water," Ms Newton said.
"They need to be able to manoeuvre their body into an upright position and be able to float on their front or their back and independently release their feet from the fin if they need to.
Royal Life Saving Western Australia researched the swim-ability in children aged two to 12 with mermaid fins and tails.
It found swim-ability dropped by 70 per cent with a fin and 60 per cent with a mermaid tail.
