North America > United States > Florida > St. Petersburg > Spectator sports > Articles > City of Mermaids

In America if you want to meet a mermaid you can. Just up the coast from St. Petersburg on U.S. 19. For $14.95.

Three times a day, behind a wall of four-inch-thick plate-glass, half a dozen mermaids - and the occasional merman - jive and pirouette in the world's only underwater spring theatre. They wear no masks or tanks and look as fresh as newly shelled shrimps. In 1947 a retired U.S. Navy frogman stumbled across Weeki Wachee spring and dreamt up the idea for a sea sprite tourist attraction. He hired a shoal of attractive, long-legged swimmers, taught them to breath through hidden hoses, dressed them in clingy swimsuits and stood them at the side of the highway to flag down passing cars. The first Florida mermaids took tickets, flipped hamburgers then dived into the pool, into which 174,000,000 gallons of clear spring water rise every day at a constant 74.5 degrees. They performed strenuous acrobatics sixteen feet beneath the surface. Even Elvis Presley stopped by to gaze at 'The Mermaid Follies' and 'Perils of Pearls'.

Today Weeki Wachee Spring has grown into a 200-acre family entertainment park 80 miles northwest of Orlando with Buccaneer water slides and a Wilderness River Cruise. For me, as one who has always had a soft spot for sea sprites, the park's frothiest attraction will always be its mermaids, whether the pink tails are real or not.

• More from Rory MacLean
• More on the same theme