All film footage shot in the making of The Sea Siren is available for download viewing at this link… The Sea Siren

I hand-built this reef tunnel next to my boat dock in Cow Key channel. I called it Chickenbone Reef because I fed its resident lobsters, fish, crabs, eels, even sharks dinner scraps. I would train my future models/mermaids on Chickenbone by introducing them to the good & bad of working in saltwater, tides, currents, and toxic marine life. They had to learn the ocean was a hostile environment to work in. They had to learn and respect this new environment to be of worth to me as a filmmaker.

The Shipwreck

The final phase of training was reaching and interacting with this lobster work boat that sank in 35 feet of water (this is where 40% failed to go forward). The Wreck posed all kinds of problems for the models… it’s deep, dark, scary, ear pressure pain, razor sharp barnacles, and for some - Claustrophobia - because it was mandatory that they enter the wreck and even explore the pitch-black sleeping quarters under the forward hatch. Truth be told, when their week was up and they completed all three phases they could almost get a job in Hollywood as a stunt actor.

Click Nikki’s photo below to watch a behind the scenes documentary about how The Sea Siren film-short was made and all the grueling hardships we had to overcome.

2000 - 2024

September 9th, 1999 I moved to a waterfront property in Key West, Florida. I had BIG plans: Working with the most talented people in advertising, marketing, photo/filmmaking, publishing and graphic arts will do that to you.

I’ll never forget, November 16, 1997, I received an email from a Hollywood film producer, a LEGIT producer, who wanted to buy the rights to Daughters of Poseidon, a sci-fi mythological treatment I had written & published on MermaidHunter.Com. He wanted to take a meeting. I won’t bore you with all the details that followed but in the end he offered over six figures for the concept. My thinking was this… Retire, go to Key West, finance the production yourself, publish it on the Internet, create a worldwide following and then sell the sequel for seven figures!

That was the plan.

Immediately I started to build “sets” - background locations for scenes in Daughters of Poseidon. The huge 10 person hot tub Grotto was designed as a small Greek temple, the swimming pool had modular waterfalls and underwater windows. I built an underwater reef tunnel system right off my boat dock in Cow Key Channel. I purchased enough SCUBA gear to suit up 10 divers, complete with underwater scooters. Poseidon gave his blessing and I discovered a sunken lobster work boat just 300 feet away in the deep water 12th avenue canal. Here I could train my future actors before going to the reef, six miles out.

THEN came what I thought would be the best, most enjoyable phase - finding, training the talent, e.g. the mermaids, the sea sirens, the humans, and most importantly developing a local film crew. How’s this as a foreshadowing sign… I advertised in the Citizen newspaper DAILY for an entire month of June, the paper even did a Sunday feature article on me and my ambitious project, and, it produced absolutely no interest by Key Westers in the project. NOTHING, ZIP, NADDA.

Are you kidding?! Really?!

I would not give up. I built a complete add-on models apartment to my existing property and posted a national casting call for talent. The deal, a FREE WEEK VACATION in KW but 4 hours a day devoted to auditioning and training to become characters needed in DOP. I bought a boat, a jet ski, kayaks, paddle boards, even new scooters to sweeten the deal. And boy, did they come; not only from the USA but overseas as well. Julia Petrik, an international competitive free diver from Moscow came for several weeks. All in all, I hosted close to 100 models over the years. I even assembled a small film team with safety divers.

BUT in the end, after spending a small fortune, it all failed. I could never assemble a working team (production and talent) in KW for a full week of shooting. Scheduling conflicts with the cast was my downfall. And then there were hurricanes to deal with in the early years. Sets were destroyed and had to be rebuilt.

One bright period happened in 2013 when Nikki du Plessis, a model from South Africa responded to a casting call and transformed from a stunningly beautiful model to an underwater Sea Siren. She seduced me from the instant our eyes met. I brought her back to KW several times for extended stays. Our greatest collaboration was a project titled: The Sea Siren. We created a 25 minute short film, a book of photography and sold individual photo prints at a local gallery. It was a highlight of my creative life and all can be seen and purchased in the Store.

The candle of enthusiasm finally flickered out in 2015. I was 65 years old and a defeated man. Daughters of Poseidon wasn’t going to become a reality. The waterfront property became a burden to maintain so I left Stock Island and rented a small apartment over Harpoon Harrys Restaurant, a joint I drank coffee in every day since my arrival in 1999. Now I was living just upstairs. If there was consolation prize for the low point this was it.

After the move to Old Town I downgraded the scope of my mermaid theme projects. I incorporated Mermaid Hunter into a 501k. I created a magazine which I hoped would become an international voice for a new cottage industry growing by leaps and bounds called: MERMAIDING. I was way ahead of the curve and foresaw a sudden urge of everyday women wearing silicone mermaid tails to perform in local pools and aquariums as semi-professional mermaids. Today, MERMAIDING is big business worldwide.

But fate had other ideas. Several brushes with life-ending health problems made me slow down. I traded my entire SONY camera systems for iPhones, and basically laid low, healing and getting my MOJO back.

Then Artificial Intelligence happened.

WOW, Reborn again! With Ai I am now able to create my Daughter of Poseidon characters on my computer and put them into visual scenes I could only dream about before now. Later this year I’ll be able to have my characters actually ACT in video scenes.

So, new beast of a computer was bought, as well as, a new art gallery grade printer for print sales, a new website host (SquareSpace), a new Storefront, a new product line, in short…

A NEW OUTLOOK ON LIFE - LET THE ADVENTURE BEGIN

The Mermaid Hunter Key West Training Facility
Illustrated by Top Model Nikki du Plessis

Swimming Pool & Greek Grotto

In addition to being a pretty good photographer and writer - I’m not bad with a saw, hammer and drill. I built this training pool by myself… 3 underwater windows, heated, insane filtration system, waterfalls and night-time sound & lighting system that was so romantic. Opposite the pool I built a hot tub / grotto shown below.

Chicken Bone Reef

1950 -1975

1963, the Beatles invaded America and three personal 'happenings' occurred that year that shaped and defined my life... and made me who I am today.

In early June, 1963, at the age of thirteen, I was invited by the Harding family to spend a week at the NY, Chenango Valley State Park campgrounds; in a log cabin by a lake to fish, hike, swim and goof off. There, I met and kissed my first girlfriend, Denise.

We met at the lake swimming. I had a crappy dive mask but for the first time I saw a mermaid's face underwater smiling and blowing bubbles. I remember that like it happened yesterday!

In late July 1963, I paged through an article in a NatGeo Magazine showcasing Key West, Florida; its beaches, palm trees, bikinis, and most importantly, it's coral reefs. One week later Mom went to wake me and found a note on my pillow saying "Don't worry, I'll be alright". I hitchhiked from Trenton, NJ to Key West, Florida. It took me 6 days and I worked the rest of the summer on a shrimp boat and diving/swimming the crystalline waters I dreamed about after seeing that magazine article.

In October 1963, Joe Marino opened The Bottom Shop, a dive shop on State Street near my home. I told him about my adventure to KW and declared I wanted a job. He paid me 3 bucks a week to keep the shop clean. I can still smell the old neoprene rubber dive suits that required covering your body with talc powder just to get them on.

YUP, 1963 was the year that I met and kissed my first mermaid, discovered Key West and realized I was forever connected to the saltwater somehow, someway.

The first 25 years of my life ended with me going to college and joining the US Air Force during Viet Nam war. After service I settled in Destin, Florida where I became a SCUBA instructor and published my first book about diving in NorthWest Florida. I also created & published the town’s first newspaper, The Destin Log, which would later sell for a cool million bucks to the Ziff-Davis publishing giant.

1975 - 2000

My brain was growing palm fronds in Florida so I went to NYC. Years 1975 to 2000 of my life were full of creative chaos. A gift (or curse) I struggle with is controlling my creative urges and creating/selling business opportunities, e.g. owner of an advertising agency, a modeling agency, a photo studio, an art director, newspaper writer and photographer, and even an apprentice to the legendary NYC photographer, Ormond Gigli.

Add to this mix the emergence of the Internet and the new worlds it opened to entrepreneurs: MermaidHunter.Com was born on a computer with a hard drive of only 185 megabits - I’m not kidding. Digital publishing was fascinating to me. Camcorders!!! The list of inventions goes on and on and on. What a time to be a visual creative - it was mind blowing.

Photography went from film on spools to digital. Kids today don’t even know what the word Kodak means. It was quite a ride being a player in the City. But, as active and crazy as that scene was I was growing restless again. The call of the Sirens was beckoning me back to Florida.