The tails — fabric and silicone, purple and gold, some dotted with sequins or lined with seashells — swaddled the lower bodies of the swimmers, adorned with seashell crowns and necklaces ...

There is blood in the water at the Freedom Aquatic and Fitness Center in Manassas, Va. Angela Murray Pavlovsky, 40, emerges from the pool with knuckles raw and red, having scraped them during a ...

In 2021, one of Jennings’ silicone tails was featured in a section of the Smithsonian’s “Girlhood (It’s Complicated)” exhibit, but that was far from the capstone of her mermaiding career.

For their custom silicone tails — which start at about $5,000 — Finfolk isn’t even taking new orders while they clear their years-long backlog of orders.

Matthew Quijano has been designing and building mermaid tails for over 10 years. The tails can be worn in ocean water as deep as 70 feet.

There’s a flash of red, then green. A pod of merpeople, men and women donning custom silicone and fabric mermaid tails, swim across the spring in a coordinated pattern.

In an era of furries, Star Wars reenactments and other popular forms of cosplay, the D.C. region is home to one of the country’s largest mermaiding communities.

In a suburban Maryland swimming pool, amid scuba divers practicing with oxygen tanks and young children wearing floaties while holding paddle boards, more than a dozen technicolored mermaid tails ...