She works about 12 hours a day during the summer (Representational Image)
In a bizarre incident, a 33-year-old English teacher from Italy left her job to become a professional mermaid, as per a report in UK's Metro. She was looking for a new hobby during the Covid-19 pandemic and saw someone dressed as a "magical merman" coming out of the sea on a local beach and then decided to take up "mermaiding".
Moss Green, who is originally from the UK, described the first-time experience as "exhilarating and exciting". She added that the practice of wearing a tail in water helped her feel "more in contact with nature and the sea". "One day, all of a sudden, I saw this magical merman come out of the water, and then he dived in again, but what came out, it wasn't legs, it was actually a tail. It was really magical to see on the secluded beach - at that moment it became really clear to me that mermaiding was what I wanted as a new hobby - it was a bit different and I could do it alone," Ms Green told the outlet.
The pastime changed into a career when the woman received a job offer on the adjacent island of Lampedusa through Instagram two years later. She was instructed on how to hold her breath underwater, dive and perform tricks to become a certified mermaid.
"I needed to be able to hold my breath, dive down a certain distance, spin around, swim facing the sky and name different fish. I can only hold my breath for about a minute at the moment because it's the start of the summer," the professional mermaid told Metro.
Ms Green claims that while earning less money than she did previously, the job choice has made her "happier than ever" and she has "no regrets" about it. "It's enough to live on, and I'm doing something I love at the end of the day - that's all that matters at the moment. Who knows what could happen in the future - for now, I'm getting my feet in the door of the mermaiding world and it's an art form so I know it's not going to pay a lot to begin with," she continued.
Further, she works about 12 hours a day during the summer, guiding boat tours and instructing guests how to swim like aquatic creatures.
Ms Green stated that her mother thought that her line of work was a "bit crazy". "I think she thought it was something I'd do as a hobby for a couple of months, but once a few months turned into a few years, she realised it wasn't," she explained.