Southern California’s Coast is home to a variety of subcultures: surfers, sailors, swimmers, divers and even mermaids. Amid many who call the ocean their second home, mermaids stand out with vibrant, life-like tails both in and out of the water. They can be seen posing by tide pools or rocks, but under the surface, they come to life.

For over a decade, mermaids have been entertaining, teaching and posing for photo shoots throughout California. More recently, however, mermaids have been taking off their tales and getting dirty to protect the waters that they spend so much of their time in.

Conserving Kelp

Andy Vargas, better known as Merman Andy, has spent most of his life in the water. He grew up loving the ocean, the aquatic ecosystem and its creatures, but he always craved a deeper connection. He’s been a diver on the Southern California coast for six years, through which he studies the kelp forests and wildlife that lives under the surface, but this wasn’t quite enough to satisfy his passion for the sea.

Vargas swims among giant kelp in a tail./ Courtesy of Andy Vargas

Vargas finally became a merman in 2020, after graduating college and making enough money to buy his first tail.

“I think our future is a hundred percent tied to the sea,” he says. “That's where we [all life] came from, and that's where we should be studying in terms of how we should be living our lives. The majority of our planet is blue.”

As a diver and a merman, he has seen firsthand the devastating impact that climate change has had on kelp forests. According to the Sierra Club, 95 percent of Northern California’s kelp has vanished over the past decade. Southern California has lost around 75 percent. “That's a staggering number,” Vargas said. “People don't really notice it because it happens underneath the water, so it's literally happening under our noses.”

He explained that the ocean is where most single use plastics end up. It’s also where wastewater ends up. For Andy, putting on the tail means becoming a part of the ocean, which makes it impossible to avoid the damage that’s happening right in front of him.

Andy is working on a project called Help Kelp, which is sponsored by the Professional Association of Diving Instructors, or PADI, that would allow other merpeople to participate in cleaning the ocean while wearing tails and swimming in the water. His first goal is to remove harmful species, he explained. Then he wants to focus on propagating more kelp.

He hopes that Help Kelp can stand out by not only looking different, but having a unique foundation. “People are starting to be attracted to this movement of people who want to connect with the water in a way that is different from just looking at it or swimming in it. They wanna learn how to commune with it as a dweller of it,” he said.

In the Field

On Nov 13, a group of mermaids, who declared themselves “treasure finders” and “keepers of the sea” gathered at Newport Beach to clean up trash around the shore. The crew spent the day gathering cigarette butts, starbucks cups and even a used enema. “The Starbucks mermaid does not approve,” chimed Vargas, drawing a comparison between Starbucks’ logo and the pollution created by their plastic cups. They also found 11 dead seagulls and a washed up squirrel, a sign that beach pollution really is harming ecosystems.

Jack Gross, who came to support Vargas and other friends at the beach cleanup, has been a merman since the early 2000s, when the community was still very small. He built his first tail in 2008 while he was studying engineering at USC. “People in this community feel a very strong affiliation with the ocean and you can kind of have this stuff take on a quality of being real,” he said as he searched the sand with his trash picker. “No one is delusional, but at the same time, if you can envision yourself living in the ocean, then you really do think of it like your home.”

Gross talked about how he and other merpeople feel called to the sea. “In a very visceral way, you can see a headline about coral bleaching and on top of the normal amount of outrage that someone should feel about something like that, I think people in this community just sort of naturally see themselves there. And it’s almost like that’s your home being trashed.”

Vargas organized the event alongside Sammy the Merthey, his friend and a trans and nonbinary member of the mermaid community, in conjunction with Sacramento’s California Mermaid Convention who hosted a cleanup around the same time just a few hours north, at the Sacramento River.

The mermaid community, an aquatic California subculture, is working hard to keep our oceans, rivers and other waterways clean. For them, this means more than just taking care of the beaches we all visit. It's about their home.

Ashley Rastad, who co-founded The California Mermaid Convention initiated the first efforts to clean up the river during the convention and one other time throughout the year.

“It's a whole identifying community of people that do this for a living and advocate for local conservation for nature,” said Rastad.

Before that, The California Mermaid Convention mostly focused on dressing up and learning how to pose under the water. They also offered swim lessons for children and other activities for them to get involved in.

At last year’s convention, a mermaid and college student who is majoring in freshwater ecology gave a lecture on the importance of keeping pollutants out of the river and how it affects the ecosystems under the surface. After her speech, the group did an “onsite ramble,” as Rastad called it, which includes collecting trash along the river for up to three hours. At the end, whoever has picked up the most trash wins a “sparkly prize,” which is usually a mermaid crown.

The convention has mermaids throughout California who can carry out the conservation duties in their region.

Protecting Their Home

Sammy Silva, who identifies as Sammy the Merthey, shares Vargas’s passion for conservation. “The ocean is my home,” they said. “I've loved merfolk since I was an infant. ‘The Little Mermaid’ came out when I was one year old, and I was hyper fixated and fell in love, and so I've loved mermaids my entire life. So being in a tail, being in the sea, being surrounded by the natural environment and the kelp forest and the fish and the sea cucumbers just makes it real to me.”

Sammy also opened up about their experience as a transgender mermaid. The mermaid community is a safe space for a diverse group of people, as they explained.

As a mermaid of 15 years and also a diver, Sammy has witnessed a lot of changes to ocean habitats. They explained that overfishing, sunscreen and trash on the beach have caused most of the damage. November’s beach cleanup was just the start of an event that Sammy hopes to maintain on a regular basis. They said that if more people get involved, they will host Sundays with Sammy, where a group meets up to clean different beaches every week.

On Nov 20, Vargas went diving in Laguna Beach to show me first hand the devastating effects climate change has had on California’s kelp forests. As a diver of seven years, he’s able to quickly pull on his wetsuit and head straight into the water. “Thank you for allowing me to show you my home,” he said as he hustled down the wooden steps that lead to Shaw’s Cove, his beach of choice for diving since he was about 16.

Once we swam past the waves, Vargas looked under the water for the giant kelp that lives just a few yards away from the shore. Garibaldi fish and other species swam past the tall tree-like structures that waded under the surface. Though there wasn’t any visible trash on the ocean floor, the few pieces of giant kelp in the area proved his devastating point. What was once a dense forest of underwater trees is now a sparse handful. Through his project, Help Kelp, he hopes to plant more giant kelp in this area and also off of the coast of Avalon on Catalina island, where he often goes diving as well.

Although his efforts are just an idea for now, he hopes to get the project up and running quickly as soon as PADI can make it happen. In the meantime, he’s still working on hosting monthly beach cleanups with Silva and the rest of the gang.

Vargas explained that mermaids are just as real as kelp deforestation. Though he admits that he’s not a mythical creature, he clarified, “Mermaids are real. I am a mermaid.”