Pensacola mermaids make kids' dreams come true

Jake Newby | Pensacola News Journal

Show Caption Hide Caption A Pensacola mermaid and her daughter swim at Dive Pros in Pensacola Mermaid Alethia and her daughter, little Mermaid Luna, swim on April 30 at Dive Pros in Myrtle Grove.

A club of Pensacola women is proving that young girls really can grow up to be mermaids.

What started off a couple of years ago as a mermaid modeling, art and accessory booth at Gallery Night has evolved into a birthday party and event service where real-life mermaids come swim, play games and read books to kids.

"It's kind of crazy because I never expected to be a mermaid," said 24-year-old Rachel Ousley, of Pensacola. "I always wanted to do like modeling or something, something along the lines of that, and I ended up becoming a mermaid along the way."

A bit of a happy accident, Mermaids of Nue Blue Hues is now an officially licensed entertainment company started by Serena Woody, 29, also of Pensacola. Woody said when she was 5 years old, she thought her eccentric, red-headed aunt was a mermaid and her aunt entertained the fantasy.

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"She always wore these seashell necklaces and jewelry and every time she'd come and visit, she'd bring me some sort of ocean-related trinket," Woody said. "I grew out of it, obviously, thinking that she was a mermaid, but I started my own mermaid art and mermaid accessories and things like that."

Woody dressed like a mermaid to sell her artwork and then she noticed she was receiving more compliments on the mermaid costumes than the art. She convinced a few friends of hers to model as mermaids alongside her at Gallery Night, and it eventually reached a point where the girls decided to see how the mermaid gear fared in the water.

"There was an art walk on Pensacola Beach every Sunday so I would have my girls out there and they were just like, 'Hey we should just go swim with the kids!'" Woody said. "Then we started including other people. Then their friends heard they were mermaids and wanted to do the same thing, so, we started a pod."

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Word spread and the original group of three mermaids has grown into a collective of 15 girls who periodically get together to get their Ariel on at Dive Pros in Myrtle Grove and even Pensacola Beach when it's warm enough.

Pensacola's Mermaid Ondina swims in her silicon tail Yolyris Gonzalez, also known as Mermaid Ondina, swims in her silicon mermaid tail at Dive Pros in Myrtle Grove.

"It's just fun, it's just being with a group of girls who just want to get out of reality for a little bit and be weird together," Woody said.

The tails, which Woody makes herself, were strange to swim in at first, said Ousley, Woody's very first mermaid model.

"It's almost like swimming with fins," Ousely said. "We were taking those off and swimming a little bit on our own and it just felt so weird without the tail 'cause you can go so much faster and so much deeper with a tail."

Six of the Nue Blue Hues mermaids are available for booking through the group's Facebook page. Woody makes all of the mermaid tails, crowns and other accessories herself and lends them to her six most experienced performers for booking at children's birthday parties, hospital visits and more.

The mermaids delve deep into the fantasy world while entertaining the kids. They each have their own mermaid names — Ousley's is mermaid Calypso — and they come up with their own fictional backstories whenever curious kids ask them where they come from or what they eat.

Woody recalled seeing a young girl's face light up when one of the mermaids gave the child the tiara off her head at Pensacola Beach.

"Her entire world was made because a mermaid had just given her her own seashell tiara," Woody said. "The little girl ran off and told her mom and you can just tell that that child's whole imagination had just become a reality."

Mermaids of Nue Blue Hues charge three different rates for their two-hour party packages: It's $150 for the mermaids to entertain at a location without a pool, $250 for pool parties where the mermaids swim and $325 if Mermaid Ondina is requested to perform at a pool party, because Ondina swims with an expensive, more realistic silicon tail.

Jake Newby can be reached at jnewby@pnj.com or 850-435-8538.