Stories of Impact - Elaina Garcia And The Great Mermaid Rescue

Nick Hill

You’re listening to Acts of Impact, the show where we discuss those making a positive difference in the world around us. I’m your host, Nicholas Hill, and today’s story is about mermaids…

<Movie clips about mermaids>

OK, not any of those mermaids. Today, we’re going to tell the story of a group of three very human professional mermaids and their photographer, Darren, who recently took part in an extraordinary rescue on the Catalina Islands off the coast of California. Along the way, we’ll learn all about the world of professional mermaiding with our guest, Elaina Marie Garcia. Let’s dive in. 

<INTRO>

Now, if you’re like me, and aren’t familiar with the Catalina islands, the first thing you probably thought of when you heard that name was…

<CATALINA WINE MIXER>

Since I didn’t know much more than that, I started by getting some quick info on the area…

Elaina Garcia

We're a small town. We're like 3,500, 4,000 people. Our biggest industry is tourism and our secondary industry is we have this rock quarry on one side of the island that kind of creates the breakwaters on the mainland. So that's our other industry, but mainly tourism.

Nick Hill

That is today’s guest, Elaina Marie Garcia. Elaina is a professional mermaid and scuba instructor for the Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI), she is also the founder of Catalina Island Mermaids. I had the privilege of speaking with Elaina, and learned that her relationship with diving and the ocean began at a very early age…

Elaina Garcia

 Yeah. So, when I was 12 actually my dad passed away and both of my parents were divers, and so a way for my mom to feel connected to him and. Like to get us as kids involved and being connected to him. We took up diving, so I learned to dive with my brother actually, and one of his friends.

And my mom and my mom took the course again as a refresher since she hadn't dove in a while. Anyway, and so we went out to Catalina for our very first dive trip and that was let's see, I was 14 at the time, so it was a long time ago now.

Nick Hill

Today, Elaina is a scuba instructor and she recently found a natural interest in mermaiding. Now a Professional mermaid is exactly what it sounds like. Those who are professional mermaids will wear mermaid tale costumes and prosthetics and will often swim in live, filmed, or photographed productions or shows.  they could also be hired for special events or artistic displays, it’s an incredibly versatile career and there is a diverse community of mermaids participating in this activity. I asked Elaina what drew her in to mermaiding and why she felt it was such a captivating activity for others

Elaina Garcia

I've slowly been drawn more into Mermaiding because I love the performance aspect and the art aspect of Mermaid. And it's a really different way to experience underwater. There is a feeling that you get when you put on the tail. What I've found is most women that wear the tail for the first time, it brings out these feelings that they might not feel in their everyday life. Suddenly they're feeling. Really empowered. They're feeling sexy. They feel like they look good in their swimsuit even if that's not something they normally would feel. It's a little bit of a connection between putting on the tail, feeling the empowerment of wearing the tail, and then bringing that back into your everyday life.

Nick Hill

Elaina wanted to share this experience with others, and so in October of 2020 she founded Catalina Island Mermaids, where her team will provide costumes, professional photo shoots, everything you would need to transform yourself into a mermaid and have the experience that Elaina is describing. 

Elaina Garcia

So right now I've started just taking people, I have a full size run of tails, everything from kids' tales up to a size 26, 28 women's which so anybody can come do a mermaid photo shoot on the beach with me.

Nick Hill

I asked Elaina how things have been going so far, and if there had been any surprises getting into this unique business. 

Elaina Garcia

You know, I think it's been interesting when I started my business, I thought my main demographic would probably be kids and families. And it turns out my main demographic has really been plus size women  which has been so fun. So I think there really is something special about putting on a mermaid tail and feeling good in the skin you're in. And it's something I really relate to. So I think. That's been really neat. 

Nick Hill

So Catalina Island Mermaids was seeing success, and Elaina was having fun doing these beach photo and helping people to bring out what I learned is called their inner ‘Mersona’ your mermaid persona of course. but Elaina wanted something more. Specifically, she wanted to be able to do photoshoots of mermaids in the water. 

Elaina Garcia

I really was drawn to taking people in the water like, what's a mermaid without getting in the water. 

Nick Hill

And as it turns out, The professional association of diving instructors, or PADI, had just begun a program that would allow Elaina to do just that…

Elaina Garcia

When Patty came out with their PADI Mermaid program where you could teach mermaid classes, I was immediately like, this is my next thing. This is gonna be great. I could take people in the water safely, teach them how to swim safely and do it in a way where I could be insured, which was a big deal.

Nick Hill

Now the idea of a mermaid training class was incredibly interesting to me, so naturally I wanted to know what kinds of skills were being taught here. What I found out was that these classes go far beyond just taking a few pictures on the beach. 

Elaina Garcia

For the Advanced Mermaid course, you're kind of combining the performance aspect of Mermaiding. and the art of Mermaiding with some free diving skills. So we do stuff like a static breath hold where you learn how to safely hold your breath for a length of time. Some of the fun cool stuff is we're learning back flips underwater. We're learning how to swim up and Kareen backwards and swim upside down underwater. We're learning multiple different tricks, twists, turns as well as some more advanced like to blow bubble rings, to blow bubble hearts. So some different cool tricks for if you wanna work in an aquarium if you wanna work in any sort of mermaid performance anywhere, these are the basics and more advanced skills that you might need for that and your, baseline skills to build your performances on. 

What we're doing is we're establishing a baseline for the. Right. So we're showing people what safe mermaiding looks like, what mermaids look like as athletes. Cuz I think in the past we've been looked at as maybe a pretty face or a performer. But it hasn't really been stated that, hey, like there's some athletic ability that takes place here.

You need to practice, you have to have a strong breath hold to do a breath hold with no. Is a lot harder of a skill than even what free divers are doing with their breath holds with a mask on. And it's actually an advanced skill in some free diving competitions where they go with no mask. So we're actually practicing some advance more advanced free dive skills than your basic free dive class.

And I think people don't always see that it's not what meets the eye with mermaiding.

what's also great is that we have this big organization, Patty that's now behind us um, that we can fall back on and we can use their resources. Uh, So that's one of the biggest plus sides. Uh, Of um, becoming a Patty Mermaid and getting Patty certified as a mermaid. Um, Not to mention the difference with, you know, being able to get strong insurance and being able to um, just have some credibility and a baseline for safety.

I think that's the biggest point I can stress here is that what we've done is There were plenty of mermaid classes in the past. But with a strong reputation like Patty has we've been able to create a baseline for what does safe mermaiding look like and how can you create a class that. Kind of promotes safe mermaiding.

Nick Hill

Now, remember, in order to teach the classes we’ve just described, Elaina needed to take the PADI advanced mermaid course herself as a pre-requisite. It was during the teaching of this class that something incredible happened…

Elaina Garcia

So Mermaid Elle was teaching a PADI Mermaid and PADI Advanced Mermaid class bundle. And for me to become a PADI Mermaid instructor, I needed first take this prerequisite class. So I was taking her prerequisite class because she is just the best in the industry. So it was great opportunity for me to do it with her.

 She supports a brand of tales called Cape Cali. And Cape Cali Tales are one of the best tales in the industry that are some of the safest to swim in with the strongest monofin that are really built for the swimming and sport aspect of Mermaiding versus the. Beauty performance.

 So we were out there doing the class and since my business is photography, I was there to take pictures of the Cape Cali Tales and do some photos and different things like that.

 So, um, We get in the water and we're having a lot of fun. We're practicing our dolphin kicks, we're practicing back flips and sea turns and all these things in the PADI class. And we move on to practicing our mermaid rescue scenarios which is really important so that when you as a mermaid are wearing your monofin, you can dive down and save a mermaid.

The reason why a mermaid would be down there and need saving is usually shallow water blackout, which is also in free diving as well. It's less common, but we still practice for it just in case for that off scenario. so we're practicing that scenario where you dive down in the monofin and you grab a mermaid who's under the water and use a special hold that you learn in the class to bring them up and get them breathing again.

 so just as we're starting this exercise we hear a yell for help. And it was very calm. It sounded very calm to me at least. but something in the back of my mind told me it was a real cry for help. And Chynne, a great free dive instructor that was also in this class with us. She was actually our safety diver.

She. Did someone just yell for help? And I said yes, and I took off swimming as fast as I could. In that direction, in the Monofin

Nick Hill

Now, let’s set the scene here for a second. Remember that Elaina has a PADI certification in scuba diving, so she’s swimming, in her mermaid monofin, towards this cry for help, and she’s not alone. Elaina is quickly joined by the class instructor, Mermaid Elle, who is also PADI certified, the class safety diver, Mermaid Chynne, who has a PADI certification in freediving safety, and their photographer Darren who is assisting with the rescue.  The rest of the class is not certified in rescue or instruction, and so they stay on shore. 

As it turns out, the person these four are swimming towards is a man named Pablo Avila, who was scuba diving with his son and a friend when he got into trouble. 

Elaina Garcia

So, we swim over and in the monofin it's hard for me to swim with my head up. So I get about halfway there. I look up with my head and I see a gentleman in full scuba with a buddy at his side and he is coughing foam, white foam. So generally in scuba when you're foaming like that it usually means something really bad has happened. 

There's a few things that can cause foam in a diver, and air embolism usually causes like pink foam or red foam. Whereas, Pablo had white or yellow foam, which usually, leans more towards , the bends. So the bends and diving is, if you come up too fast or you stay down too long, you have excess nitrogen in your system and as you come up it expands, right?

And so, that's why divers come up slowly. It gives their bodies time to work out the excess nitrogen.

So in the first moment, I'm there by myself. I was the first one to arrive mermaid l chin and Mermaid L's partner Darren, who was our first. Photographer for the day. He was racing over as well,but I was the first to get there to Pablo and I recognized immediately he was not breathing.

And so the first thing I did was wipe the foam off and give him a breath.I gave him mouth to mouth. As soon as that happened, my. I felt lucky because I'm well trained as a scuba instructor, and I had great Patty instructors that came before me that taught me. And just really drilled me with these rescue skills so that I didn't have to think too hard about what came next.

It just came naturally. So I'm really thankful for like, mark Gutti or DJ Mansfield at Beach City Scuba. And these are people that really perfected my skills before this rescue ever happened. Uh, So I feel really grateful for that. I've just been able to work with really great instructors. . But um, anyway, so I was able to, as soon as I gave him that first breath, I unclipped part of his B, c, D, and then I gave him another breath.

Nick Hill

Now, if you’re like me, you’re probably picturing how strange this must look to Pablo’s son and his friend, who are struggling to help Pablo, when suddenly a mermaid shows up and begins performing rescue breaths! Let’s hear their perspective

<CLIP FROM JOSH AND JAVIER>

Elaina Garcia

I unclipped more of his b, c, d, gave him another breath, and we were probably a good I'd say at least a hundred feet from the stairs, our exit point. So I knew the priority was to tow him as quickly as possible so that we could get him to the paramedic. You know, and the real care that he needed, not the in-water care, 

So, I ended up deciding to slide the gear out so that I could tow him just himself and keep giving him breaths. And with the seven Milt suit on, he was really buoyant, so I didn't have to worry. chin had already dropped his weight, so she helped me with that. Mermaid l was able to grab the weights and drop them.

The buddy, Josh was his name he was kind of sticking around with us and I was able to kind of direct him to let us take Pablo so we could be a little bit more fast. So we were actually able to, I gave Pablo rescue brush every five seconds. We were able to tow 'em to the stairs and at one point we're about 20 feet from the stairs.

When I realized that. Chin the free dive instructor and Darren who was also in Bio Fins because he was taking photos that day. They were so fast that these last 20 seconds it would be better for me to just let them take him on to that last 20 feet. So although the rescue breasts were important, I could tell that the firetrucks had already.

And it was time to just get him to his extra care. So I ended up saying Chin Darren, you know, take him. And Darren was able to take his head and get him to the bottom of the stairs, where actually this awesome instructor, mark Gucci, he was at the bottom of the stairs ready for me saying, What do you need?

How can I help you? And , so he was right there to take him from me and I believe helped get him up the stairs. Where I remember just looking at him and this instructor, mark, and I remember just being totally dumbfound and going, oh my gosh, I'm in a monofin.

So. Pablo ended up being moved into an area where that was more accessible for the paramedics and everyone who's coming in. And I believe it was Baywatch Avalon the City of Avalon fire department, Ellie County Fire that came in and helped. And Ellie County lifeguards. So we had quite a big team there ready to help Pablo. And they were actually able to do compressions give him the care he needed in order to have a positive outcome. From my perspective, it seemed that they stopped compressions on scene which to me meant that he had a pulse, which was like our sign of, wow. You know, this might be okay. Because what we had seen from Pablo was pretty serious. So, I wouldn't have guessed that would be his outcome. he ended up being put on a gurney and he was rolled away presumably to the chamber so he could get the care he needed. But that was the last that we had kind of heard.

Nick Hill

Later that day, Elaina and her fellow rescuers received a text message from Joshua, letting them know the extraordinary news…

Elaina Garcia

I had met with the buddy Josh, is his name, and I'd asked him, Hey, do you mind if I stay in touch with you? Because I think I would just like to know if he makes it, you know, if you know, hopefully we made a difference. he gets back to us later that day. We're all sitting around the table at our favorite restaurant, the Buffalo Nickel , and it just says, Pablo's made it. He's breathing, he's talking. You know, everything's okay over here, you know, so grateful to be saved by mermaids. Can't believe it.

Nick Hill

So that is the story of the incredible mermaid rescue of Pablo Avila. The emergency responders on land credited Elaina, Chynne Elle, and Darren’s quick action as the reason for Pablo’s "revival" and "healthy recovery. I asked Elaina how it felt to be a part of such an important moment. 

Elaina Garcia

They did tell me that he didn't have very much water. Which is a great sign with a water rescue. I think you normally see quite a bit of swallowed water and he didn't have too much, which means, you know, we did a good job of keeping his head outta the water and keeping his airway clear and open.

So I was really proud you know, that was my first in-water rescue where I had to do rescue bras. So I was proud to see that it did have a good outcome and that my training kicked in. You know, there were so many people involved. And one of my biggest takeaways from this whole experience was just like we had Patty free dive instructor, Patty Mermaid instructor.

We had Patty Scuba instructor waiting on the stairs. We had so many dive pros and all of our training kicked in at the same time. That's why we jumped in because there was also probably 50 people standing in the parking lot that did nothing. . so I think that's it was really cool to see all these pros stepping up and being there because that's what we're trained to [00:01:00] do.

When the layperson's reaction was to, oh my gosh, this is crazy. Watch what happens, you know? Freeze. I really attribute that back to the system of training. That we all went through that got us to that day where I still say like, I don't feel like I did it myself. I feel like I watched someone else do it.

And so, I think that only comes when your training has beenstructured so that if you make a mistake, you do it again until you can't get it wrong. You know, mastery of skill, which is what PAD strives for, is like, it's not, you do it until you get it right. Once you do it, till you get it right more often than you get it wrong.

I really hope that people listening that hear my story and maybe they're inspired by this story and they wanna become a mermaid themselves, or they're excited for their kids to try mermaid. I hope that before you buy that mermaid tail online and try it out in your backyard pool. you take a class, meet with an instructor, come learn these safety techniques.

Come learn what it means to be a patty mermaid, and how that's gonna move you forward and honestly boost you forward into a better experience, a safer experience, and into a whole community of people that are there and ready to support you. Some of my best friends I've met because I've been doing Patty classes or I've been mermaiding or going to meetups, it's just an awesome community. I love being a part of it.

Nick Hill

And for my final question, I asked Elaina if she has been able to keep in touch with her fellow rescuers. 

Elaina Garcia

Yeah, actually this has been such a bonding experience for us, I think,this has gotten quite a bit of media coverage and to go through this altogether. You know, when you. Go through this. You have this experience, you save this person. You don't necessarily expect it to be worldwide news , you know, you kind of expect, wow, that was crazy.

And to go about your normal life. So since then we've actually gotten to reunite. We've gotten to talk with Pablo over Skype and see each other that way. And then I recently just last week, I went out to Florida to meet with Mermaid l and Chin. And I got to practice some instructing skills with Mermaid L and I actually got to assist Chin in one of her free dive classes in the Florida Springs.

So I think it's become a really fun, professional relationship and. I think moving forward we'll be teaching classes together. So, we're kind of calling it the Ultimate Mermaid package, and where you can learn to mermaid, you can learn to scuba dive and you can learn to free dive all in one retreat. you know, mermaids are not just a pretty face, we're athletes. We train. Practice.

So, I think we're excited to push that forward into the world and kind of see where that takes us. 

Nick Hill

We are incredibly excited to see where it goes as well, and I want to take a moment to say thank you to Elaina for giving us her time, teaching us about mermaiding, and for her, Elle, Chynne, Darren, and the other rescuers for helping to save Pablo in a dire moment of need. In the shownotes, I’ll post links to Elaina’s instagram and website so that you can learn more about mermaiding. 

And folks, that concludes our final episode of 2022, thank you so much for listening to Acts of Impact this year, this is my first experience with podcasting and it’s been so much fun learning, making mistakes, trying new things, meeting new people, and producing this show for you. We’ll be back next year with new stories and new episode formats, we’ll be experimenting with the show but ultimately, we’ll be bringing a lot more positive impact to your day, so. Until then, I hope you have a wonderful holiday season. And we’ll be back soon. 

<OUTRO MUSIC>

Today’s show was directed and produced by me, with music from Alex Grohl. Special thanks to our guests for their time and insight. If you liked today’s episode, please follow us wherever you listen to podcasts, and consider leaving a review as it will help us to spread the word about the show. You can view more information about today’s episode online at actsofimpact.com. Thank you for listening.