Mermaids (and, more recently merfolk) have been the subject of examination in a number of scholarly studies. Here are a few examples from the last 5 years (or so).
● ARE MERMAIDS REAL? Rhetorical Discourses and the Science of Merfolk.in Shima, Volume 12 Number 2 2018
● Swimming with mermaids: Communication and social density in the Second Life merfolk community in Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 48, July 2015, Pages 226-235
● How the Naturalists Described Merfolk or Mermaids: Fishes, Women, and Mammalia in Hikaku Bungaku Journal of Comparative Literature
● How fast could a mermaid swim? in the Journal of Interdisciplinary Science Topics, Volume 7, 2018
● Bodies and technologies: Becoming a ‘mermaid’: myth, reality, embodiment, cyborgs, windsurfing and the sea in Living with the Sea, Knowledge, Awareness and Action, 2018 – Taylor & Francis
● Scaled for Success: The Internationalisation of the Mermaid in Western Folklore; Chico Vol. 78, Iss. 1, (Winter 2019):
Research research : Martin Gardiner
Photo credit : Miss ‘Definitely’ Downtown. A Norfolk mermaid.
Photographer: Captain Albert E. Theberge
Affiliation: NOAA Corps (ret.)
Date: 2003 June
Location: Virginia, Norfolk
Subject: Coastline
Subject: Mid-Atlantic Virginia
Subject: Art