The mermaid is a legendary mermaid creature with a beautiful woman on the upper body and a beautiful fish tail draped in scales on the lower body. There are many, many rumors and cultural works about them.
For example, in the "Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales" that we read when we were children, the mermaid princess who endured severe pain for love and turned into a human form, and turned into a bubble because she couldn't bear to hurt the prince, the movie "Mermaid" in recent years, and so on.
But did you know that there is also a group of "mermaids" dancing underwater in reality?
An auditorium in Weeki Wachee Springs State Park, 5 meters above the ground, is connected to a 120-meter-deep cave with a rectangular 6 x 1 meter opening that gushes nearly 450,000 cubic meters of water every day.
The water is surrounded by a thick glass wall with blue curtains, which are opened three or four times a day. When the curtain is opened, the "mermaid" appears.
They wear special costumes and hold their breath as they move, then breathe through oxygen tubes connected to the outside of the stage. They spend a full 30 minutes underwater for each performance and smile all the time.
In the beginning, there were no respirators underwater, and the "mermaids" had to surface to breathe. Breathing with an oxygen tube only emerged in the 40s of the last century.
Newton Perry, a naval officer at the time, bought the place in the hope of fulfilling his wish here: to see mermaids swim. He tried a lot of things to make it possible for people to breathe in the water without having to wear bulky equipment. Finally, he installed pipes under water to exhaust the air with a compressor.
In 1959, ABC acquired Weeki Wachee, when as many as 500,000 people came to see the show each year.
Now, to become a mermaid, one must be certified by the American Diving Association and certified as a lifeguard. On top of that, there are a lot of health issues to face.
First of all, there is a limit to making movements underwater and holding your breath. According to Teresa Alentejano, a world-renowned synchronized swimming coach and physiologist, this limit is 40 seconds. But thanks to the oxygen tube, the "mermaid" does not need to hold its breath for a long time.
Jim Chimiak, medical director of the nonprofit Dive Alert Network, said that staying at a depth of 20 feet (about 6 meters) is normally not considered a health hazard, but the water pressure at this depth is 1.5 times the pressure people would experience at the surface.
In addition, when diving, the "mermaids" must take care to balance their middle ears – usually by making simple swallowing movements. "If you don't take care of it, you can have permanent hearing damage to your eardrum, middle ear bones and inner ear," Chimiak says. ”
What's more, water washes away the natural oils on the surface of their skin, making them susceptible to bacterial infections in the water.
It is important to note that consciously controlling breathing can also affect the physiological structure of the person. When synchronized swimmers hold their breath, their heart rate drops rapidly, even when they're exercising intensely – it's how the body tricks itself into breathing less.
"A lower heart rate means less oxygen is needed, and therefore less oxygen is provided," Alentejano said. The feeling of "not being able to breathe" triggers a fear response that causes the heart to beat faster. Fear also requires a greater supply of oxygen.
A long-term imbalance between the supply of oxygen and the actual needs of the body can lead to a range of chronic diseases.
Still, 19-year-old Paisley, of Florida (Paisley is her stage name and mermaids don't give out their real names), is more than happy to accept the job, saying she likes the children's reaction — like seeing Santa Claus.
When the children asked her, "Can you turn me into a mermaid?" Paisley said, "When you're older, you can come here, and we've got a magic potion." ”
More than those ethereal phantoms, the mermaids at Weeki Wachee Springs are even more moving.
THE JINGXUAN