Mermaiding gains traction in South Africa

"Mermaiding" is the sport of using a monofin and a fabric tail to move like a mermaid.

The sport has been gaining in popularity with it's own mermaiding school in South Africa's Johannesburg. 

"This is a mermaid swim school and I just taught a mermaid swim class. It's lots of fun. We swim with a dolphin technique and we use sculling and then we put it all together and we work out a little sequence", said Izelle Nair, mermaiding instructor at Merschool.

The sport provides a full body workout as well as a range of other health benefits.

"So I came from a bit of a synchro (synchronised swimming, ed) background and we are bringing a lot of the synchronised swimming into the actual mermaiding as well. So the backrolls, some of the warm-ups and activities that we do come from swimming" added swimming instructor Nadia Walker.

This sport has become very popular in China. The country holds the world record for the biggest aquatic show involving 100 mermaids.