Where is weeki wachee mermaids

Despite his laudable success, the cherub-faced, veteran diving entrepreneur cum evangelist remains an enthused, thoughtful, soft-spoken, sweet heart of a guy—in Brit speak: a proper sort of bloke.

We caught up with Whelan just as the UK was emerging from its last lock-down. What keeps me in diving? The same thing that got me in it in the first place.

It was a super cool thing to do, to talk about and to write about. My mom and her side of the family were all journalists, so I always had this bit of passion for being a journalist myself. Although I never formally trained as a journalist, I still learnt a lot on how to be a journalist from my family. I was also very into computers in those days. Of course, I still am.

It was the early years of the Internet, and I was learning how to code a website. In those days you had to open up your text editor and actually, physically, type open angle bracket, write your HTML code, type close angle bracket and all that kind of cool stuff. So, DeeperBlue combined writing, technical stuff, and diving, which I have always been very passionate about. And it really has just kept evolving ever since, which has kept it interesting.

In the early days, DeeperBlue was much more of what we would now call a blog. After publishing a bunch of my own stories, I got approached by a few other people who wanted to contribute, and that was pretty cool. Then in we opened the forums and that took off because it was before the social media titans of today — Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter.

So, it became this hub of the community and less about writing articles about diving and more about engaging with the community and talking about stuff. Although I started by writing about scuba, we very quickly focused on the freediving side, which was new and interesting at the time.

Though holding your breath and going underwater is one of the oldest sports on the planet, from the competitive side of things, it was the embryonic days of competitive freediving at a global level.

Later we pivoted back to being more journalistic and writing articles, features and news. So, the focus of what we do has shifted many times and that has kept us fresh and interesting. And how do you get young people in the sport? You have to go where they are, understand what they are interacting with and what they want to do.

So, that always keeps things new. I always remember what my diving instructor told me when I was doing my dive leader training— the divemaster equivalence in the BSAC system. Because once you do, forevermore, diving is never going to be about you and what you want to do. What do you know? It sounded ridiculous to me. Very quickly I discovered he was right. My first thought was snorkeling—it was an interesting and importantly cheap way of getting people in the water.

I began researching who else was writing about snorkeling, and I found a website called Internet Freediving and Snorkeling Magazine run by a chap called Cliff Etzel. There was an embryonic community starting to build from a competitive standpoint. Films like The Big Blue had come out and were encouraging people to do this crazy sport of holding your breath and go underwater as long as you can.

But it was all very regionalized, very driven by Europe. France, Italy, Greece, countries where freediving was part of their identity and culture—much of it focused around spearfishing. But at the time, there was nowhere to share the information, nowhere to engage with others. Remember this was before social media. People immediately gravitated to them. It enabled divers to communicate and share information.

We prided ourselves on the fact that we were a very friendly, welcoming forum and we kept it tightly moderated. There was no such thing as a stupid question. People really enjoyed engaging with it. You can look back on some of the archives and see so many of the world champions of that time, and even now today. Like William Trubridge. It looks like a pretty interesting place to go freediving.

Tanya Streeter was there. There was a Canadian guy called Eric Fattah that was really interesting. He was kind of the geeky, mad scientist-type person that was always experimenting with both the science of freediving as well as hacking his own body to do things differently and better and stuff. He was a great guy. Yes, he was. I mean, the list goes on and on.

Anyone who was anyone in freediving would have been on the forums at some point. There was a lot of misinformation on there as well. They were exciting times but also very hard. So, there was a bit of a danger where somebody could push themselves in the wrong way, and could injure themselves. So that was always something that we felt a very strong duty of care to do while not stifling the freedom of expression that comes with a global forum. He also ran a number of the early international competitions, and had the contract to run courses at a military facility based down in Portsmouth.

T at HMS Dolphin. It was manned by Royal Navy specialists and used to train submariners to escape from sinking submarines. We saw it as an opportunity. I teamed up with a, now dear friend, Emma Farrell, who is still very active in the freediving education circles runs a company called Go Freediving.

Again, for me, it was always about how do you get new people into the sport. My diving career has never been about doing advanced, crazy stuff. We became heavily involved in helping to shape early education for the International Association for the Development of Apnea AIDA , and some of the national federations.

We sat on education committees. We helped shape and formulate a lot of the early courses. All of that is lost in the mists of time now, but we were very heavily involved in doing those sorts of things. And it was cool. We ran courses until I think—a six year run. It was great to see all these people sign up and learn to freedive while I got to spend my weekends bobbing around.

It was beautiful. The water was body temperature, so you could be in shorts, speedos and or a bathing suit and spend the day going up and down.

Martin Stepanek was just setting up Freediving Instructors International. Those organizations were very much leading the way as far as education. We were trying to be different and to create a professional structured program. In the early days, I like to describe things as a bit hippie dippy in the freediving world. I wanted to make sure that all my instructors got paid a decent amount of money for giving up their weekends to come and teach.

We were also one of the first freedive training organizations, to have proper insurance, business insurance rather than just personal instructor insurance.

It took them three or four years to appreciate that we never had a single incident. We were not about having any loss of motor control or blackouts or anything like that. It was all about doing it safely and in a controlled manner. Eventually that became the norm. Nearly every single diving agency has a freediving program of some sort now. The teaching and business model have become fairly standardized.

Education is really important and so is competition. There are some simply amazing, mind-blowing competitions these days. De Leon Springs FL Skip to main content. Hours 9 a. Ages 5 and under admitted free. Contact Info Welcome to Weeki Wachee Springs State Park Step back in time and enjoy the classic mermaid show, but remember this quintessential Old Florida site is also home to the deepest freshwater cave system in the country and abundant protected wildlife. Plan Your Visit. As a proud member of the Florida State Park family, we are committed to preserving, interpreting and restoring these resources, while providing resource-based recreation.

We invite you to come see our world-famous Mermaids of Weeki Wachee Springs State Park perform classic shows and underwater feats of delight. Buccaneer Bay is a remaining piece of Roadside America.

The world famous Weeki Wachee Mermaids want to hear from you! She lives less than two miles from the park. Her daughter Lauren became a mermaid, too. But the job application changed with the generations. In , Lydia swam across the spring and back and got the job.

The early mermaids also wore masks. When Lauren leaves, there will be no going back. Park management says that once the former mermaids hang up their fins for good, the legacy shows will end. Canoe and kayak rentals cost extra. Weeki Wachee Springs State Park is also home to Buccaneer Bay , a spring-fed water park with flume rides, kiddie pool area, beaches and sand volleyball.

Kayak rentals and guided trips are available at the park for a six-mile, downriver paddle to Rogers Park , which has a swimming area and restaurants on the river. Other local spring-fed rivers with swimming and kayaking include the Chassahowitzka, Crystal and Rainbow. She lives in St.