“I am a professional mermaid,” begins the former Miss Germany International 2006, whilst sipping on a tonic water in a Patong cafe.
For Mermaid Kat, as she is also known, being a mythological creature is a perfectly natural profession, “Boys have Transformers and girls have mermaids.
“It all started for me when I first saw Disney’s Little Mermaid movie when I was about five years old, I knew then I wanted to become a mermaid.”
However, Katrin’s father warned her that if she tied her legs together – as she wanted to do – she would drown.
Despite this warning though, five-year-old Kat persisted, “ I would always sit with my legs together and, when swimming, move my legs with the motion of a dolphin.”
Such style of swimming, now enhanced by her use of a specially-made mono-fin, is much more natural believes Mermaid Kat, “The movement of the legs in a unified motion, like a dolphin, just works.”
Although she fell in love with mermaids as a little girl, it is only recently that Katrin took the plunge and became a fully fledged professional mermaid, of which she believes there are only a few.
“There are only five really good mermaids in the world and I am one of them. The others are no good.
“Good mermaids care for the environment and go deep sea diving, but there are hundreds around the world who just put on a fin, go into a pool and pinch their noses to have their photographs taken.”
For Katrin, this kind of behavior just doesn’t float. She believes that in order to be a professional mermaid, one needs to be able to do at least two things:
“The first thing is to be a good free diver. I go down and swim underwater with the sea creatures without any equipment, just my monofin.”
The second part is underwater modelling, which is apparently much more difficult than it looks, “I have to still look good without a mask on and with saltwater going up the nose. It’s quite hard.”
Desipite the difficulty, her experience as a model meant that she took to it like, well a mermaid to water.
Her dream of becoming a professional mermaid began around two years ago, “I thought that I’m not getting any younger so I started looking for something else [to do].
“I became a scuba diving instructor in Australia, and I suppose my love of mermaids all came flooding back to me then, and I thought ‘hey, maybe there is something I can do here.’”
Working as a scuba diving instructor allowed Katrin to perfect the fluid ‘mermaid’ style of free diving. Now she teaches others how to follow in her stream.
“I am the first mermaid teacher in the world,” she says. “I have given workshops in Phuket and Bali and next year when I return to Germany I will be giving workshops there – to teach how to become a mermaid, how to swim with a monofin, and care for the environment.
“As well as swimming in the sea, being a mermaid means I also do lots of [environmental] campaigns. I am like a bridge between sea creatures and people.”
“I can show people the problems in the ocean – over-fishing, the shark fin industry, and pollution.”
In fact Katrin has just come back (June 4) from Bali where she was doing just that - participating in an environmental meeting organised by non-profit group Project Aware.
Although Katrin is more commonly seen on Phuket land and waters, she resorts to taking aspiring mermaids elsewhere. “Unfortunately most diving sites in Phuket have been ruined over the years.
“Five years ago, a dive in Phuket waters would have probably yielded a manitee sighting or something. Now the waters are empty, so many of my dives and photoshoots are in Racha Yai, Similan and Phi Phi.”
Now an accomplished free diver, she says that swimming with marine life, unimpeded by breathing appartus and diving equipment, is the best feeling in the world.
“The feeling is amazing. I sometimes dive right down to the sea bottom where other people have all the scuba diving equipment on and say ‘Hi’, wearing just my monofin and bikini, it feels so awesome.”
A sad part of this tale is that unfortunately Mermaid Kat’s father never saw his daughter achieve her dream.
“I gave up my dream because my father forbade it, and he died when I was 16 years old and so never got the chance to see how far I took it, and how I swim, sometimes 20 metres deep and with manitees.”
Mermaid Kat’s husband, although initially a skeptic, is now wholly supportive of his wife’s rather unusual chosen line of work.
“When I first said to my husband, I want to be a mermaid, he just said okay... Now he is more like my full time manager,” she says.
It’s a job that keeps them both busy, and at times having her husband never too far away brings great comfort to Mermaid Kat.
“Many in the ‘mermaid community’ are freaks,” says Mermaid Kat, with particular reference to a visit she paid to the Las Vegas Mermaid Competition in 2011, which she found, “strange” to say the least.
“Yes a lot of them were ‘out there’. Many came up to me to ask to touch my fin and things like that.”
Mermaid Kat thinks that for many enthusiasts an interest in mermaids borders on fetishism and even perversion, but for her, being a mermaid is not about sexuality, though she understands the attraction.
“Mermaids are very beautiful, very mysterious and they’re just outside of this world. They’re sexy sure... it’s a fantasy.”
For more information on Mermaid Kat or her training sessions, visit mermaid-kat.com, for all manner of mermaid merchandise including fins, bras and bikinis, visit mermaid-kat-shop.de