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Aberdeenshire woman conquers fear of swimming in the ocean - to become a professional mermaid
An Aberdeenshire woman has conquered her fear of swimming in the ocean - to become a professional mermaid.
Kirsten Waddle, 24, has been obsessed with the mythical sea creatures since watching Disney classic 'The Little Mermaid' as a child.
Lead character Ariel inspired her alter-ego - Belle the Stonehaven Mermaid.
She took the plunge to go professional after attending a mermaid convention in London with her friend, the Cornish mermaid Scarlette Von Borowski.
Kirsten, from Aberdeen, Scotland, purchased her first tail and vowed to beat her fear of the ocean and deep waters.
After joining a Scottish mermaid pod, she began swimming in deep pools and her fear was alleviated when she saw how confident her peers were.
She now does paid appearances as the Disney princess Ariel.
Kirsten, a primary education student at the University of Aberdeen, said: "I remember watching The Little Mermaid 2 and just loving Ariel's daughter, Melody.
"I'd always been amazed at Ariel's tail, but I really identified with Melody - she was boisterous and a bit of a troublemaker, just like me.
"I spent half of my childhood pretending I was a mermaid and playing mermaid-themed games, but I'd always been really afraid of the sea and deep water.
"Somewhere along the line I'd developed anxiety about what was swimming underneath me in the sea - I even started to panic that there were sharks in my local swimming pool.
"Nothing really changed until earlier this year, when I saw a photo of an old friend, Scarlette, wearing a gorgeous green tail on Instagram - I needed it to be a reality for me too.
"I immediately messaged her asking about it and she offered to take me with her to a mermaid convention in London so I could see everything for myself.
"I couldn't believe it when I got there, it was like a dream.
"There were stalls with everything mermaid related that you could imagine - including old Barbie's that had been remodelled as mermaids - and, best of all, dozens of mermaids swimming together in a pool.
"Watching them, I just wanted to join in and forget about my nerves. There were mermaids of all shapes, sizes and styles - the only thing they had in common was the passion they had for being a mermaid."
Kirsten spent the entire train journey back to Scotland looking at tails online before purchasing her first tail - a beautiful blue number which cost £80.
She joined a pod of mermaid enthusiasts known as the 'Tartan Tails' and got to try out her new tail at a group swimming session in a local pool.
"Seeing everyone else just own it and embrace their mermaid-selves really made me feel good," she said.
"I started to let go of the fear and, just like I had at the convention, I could just enjoy the water for what it was."
Inspired by Scarlette's mer-name, Kirsten decided to pay homage to the harbour town near her home, where she had helped work on her grandfather's boat with her cousins growing up, and with that Belle the Stonehaven Mermaid was born.
As she grew in confidence, Kirsten even began working professionally as people began to hire her to make surprise appearances.
But Kirsten had still not had a chance to enter the ocean and face her fears head on - or tail first.
"I'd been swimming in pools in Glasgow for a while when Scarlette invited me to Cornwall to swim in the sea with her," she said.
"I wasn't sure if it would be scarier than the pool, but it ended up being better than ever!
"I followed Scarlette's lead and just got right in - the practice at the pool in Glasgow had built my core strength, and I just felt comfortable almost immediately.
"Families on the beach even came over with their children to take photos - it was amazing."
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Manursing Island Club
Rye Town/Oakland Beach
American Yacht Club
Shore Acres Club
Larchmont Manor Park
Larchmont Shore Club
New Rochelle Rowing Club
Davenport Club
Greentree Club
Westchester Country Club Beach: B+
Rye Playland Beach: B+
Coveleigh Beach Club: B-
Shenorock Shore Club: B+
Mamaroneck Beach & Cabana: B-
Harbor Island Beach: C-
Beach Point Club: B-
Orienta Beach Club: B
Echo Bay Yacht Club: A-
Hudson Park: C+
Surf Club: B+
VIP Club: B+
Beckwith Pointe: A-
Glen Island Park: B+
These Are Westchester's Best Swimming Beaches
WESTCHESTER COUNTY — Westchester is home more than 20 beaches, but some have worse water quality issues than others. A new report by Save The Sound ranked Long Island Sound beaches based on fecal-indicator bacteria counts.
Water quality can vary greatly from beach to beach with some consistently clean beaches being close to beaches with more frequent issues, according to the report. Save the Sound encourages people to look for potential pollution sources for beaches and take action to clean them up. Areas that are in a harbor or other more stagnant area also tend to have more issues.
Samples are most often taken weekly and tested for fecal-indicator bacteria that point to potential contamination issues. Results typically take one day to be analyzed. Rain often brings contamination from streams, rivers and stormwater drainage pipes to the coasts. Bacteria-contaminated water is eventually diluted by tides and disinfected by the sun's UV rays.
Water quality issues are predicted to increase at Sound beaches due to increasing rainfall caused by climate change, according to Save the Sound. It will become more important that coastal communities commit to cleaning stormwater drainage systems, rivers and creeks.
Exposure to pathogen-containing water can cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, headache and fever along with upper respiratory tract and other infections. Children, the elderly and those with compromised immune systems are more vulnerable.
The report takes into account the frequency of pollution and how high the fecal contamination level gets.
Contamination is often caused when sanitary sewer overflows and discharges occur from line breaks in sewer and septic systems. The raw sewage eventually mixes with rain and flows to the nearest stormwater catch basin or river and ultimately ends up in the Sound, according to the report.
The following Westchester beaches were ranked by Save the Sound as the best for swimming, receiving an A+:
The grades in 2018 for the other Westchester beaches are:
What can residents do
Homeowners who are hooked up to municipal sewage systems should make sure their sewer pipes are free from cracks. Roots in sewer pipes are a common sign of cracks. A less costly fix is to install trenchless pipe liners that go inside the pipe.
Septic system owners should be regularly maintained and inspected by a professional.
No one should throw garbage including animal waste into stormwater catch basins.
Check out the full report here, including your beach's grade.
Written by Rich Scinto, Patch Staff, with additional reporting by Michael Woyton, Patch Staff.
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A Trend To Hate: Epidemic Of ‘Urban Resort Fees’ At City Hotels
Buyer beware: City hotels are increasingly adding mandatory resort fees to their bills.
Getty
The Crowne Plaza Times Square Manhattan calls its $35-a-night charge a “daily facility fee.” At the Kimpton Hotel Palomar Washington D.C., the $25 nightly add-on is called a “guest amenities fee.” Meanwhile, the InterContinental Chicago Magnificent Mile and Grand Hyatt San Francisco prefer the equally vague “destination fee.”
No matter what you call them, these are resort fees – the same pesky, daily mandatory charges loathed by travelers at plush vacation properties with swimming pools, spas and towel service. What’s new is that these hidden fees have become increasingly common at city hotels, says Randy Greencorn, co-founder of ResortFeeChecker.com, a website that has tracked resort fees since 2015.
In the past four years, the number of New York City hotels charging resort fees skyrocketed from 10 to 124, according to Greencorn’s research. During that same period, Los Angeles jumped from nine to 41 hotels and San Francisco went from eight to 40 hotels. “Even Chicago, which only had three hotels charging resort fees in 2015, now has 21 hotels charging them,” says Greencorn.
“I like to call them ‘urban resort fees’,” says Bjorn Hanson, an adjunct professor at the New York University School of Professional Studies Jonathan M. Tisch Center for Hospitality and Tourism, who researches hotel fees. “They have become common at full-service and even some select-service hotels in major cities, and now it's spreading to secondary and tertiary cities.”
“In 2017, we saw a small number of hotels trying it, mostly in New York and in a few major cities, like Chicago and Los Angeles,” says Hanson. “By the end of 2018, these fees had become common in most major U.S. cities. And for 2019, we see another multiple-hundreds-of-percent increase.”
To consumer advocates, resort fees are a sneaky way for hotels to raise revenue without technically raising their room rates. As a result, travelers are fooled into thinking they’re getting a better deal than they really are, says Greencorn. “These fees make a hotel’s nightly rate look cheaper, especially on aggregator sites. But when you go to pay, you realize, ‘Oh, actually, I'm not paying $100 a night. I'm actually paying $140 a night."
Hanson says that, compared to previous years, he’s finding fewer examples of blatantly deceptive wording on hotel websites. But transparency is in the eye of the beholder.
These fees often don’t appear until the end of the online booking process, after a traveler has selected dates and room type, just before confirming the reservation. Typically, you must click on a “rate details” link to find out what is actually included in the fee.
“Hotels have all types of expenses,” says Greencorn. “They have housekeeping expenses, advertising, electricity — and they don't itemize those. All those expenses are bundled up and included in the nightly fee. So why separate out a so-called facility charge or destination charge? There's no logical reason for it – except that everyone else is doing it,” he says.
Once resort fees start appearing in a city, there’s a bandwagon effect. “One hotel sees the hotel across the street charging a resort fee and getting away with it. They're getting an additional 30 bucks per night per room, so why not try it?" says Greencorn. “Then the hotel down the street tries it and it sort of just snowballs. These fees have certainly blossomed like an algae bloom in New York.”
“In a market where it's very difficult to raise room rates because of price transparency through the internet and revenue management practices, hotels are stretching for ways to find increases in revenue,” says Hanson. “This is new, and we're still in a period of experimentation in terms of how high can they go? But to the extent that one hotel is a price leader and doesn't lose market share, other hotels will notice and respond.”
To bottom line: To get better value for money, city travelers need to be vigilant and do their homework. “A very savvy consumer will not only compare room rates but also resort fees and what services are included in those fees,” said Hanson. If you typically book on third-party booking sites, this means an extra step of also visiting the hotel’s website to search the fine print.
“The room rate for Hotel B may be a little lower and the resort fee a little higher, but taken together, maybe what I'm getting at Hotel B is actually better for me than what it is at Hotel A,” says Hanson. “It takes a couple of minutes, maybe, but it will all be on the website.”
Just know that if you don’t discover the fee until you get to the hotel, it’s probably too late. “It is a mandatory fee,” says Hanson, “so very difficult, if not impossible, to have removed.”
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