Mermaids and Monofins
Ville d'origine : Los Angeles, California
Âge : 44
Années de plongée : 20, but I did my first Discover Scuba in 1995
Pourquoi je suis membre de DAN : Diving is only fun if it’s safe, and safety is always my priority. DAN provides the support I need for optimal fun in my favorite element.
Any child predisposed to a love of nature will likely find their way to natural environments, which happened early and fortuitously for Linden Wolbert. When she turned 1 year old, her family moved to an old farm in Pennsylvania, not far from where George Washington crossed the Delaware River during the Revolutionary War.
There were lightning bugs twinkling and bullfrogs croaking in the summers. There were horses, deer, and geese. It was bucolic but not totally insulated from outside influences. The TV had only three channels, and PBS was Wolbert’s portal to the Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau , et NOVA documentaries about the ocean that comprised her childhood fantasies. Watching those adventures may have influenced her decade as a competitive swimmer from ages 8 through 18. She knew she had to be in the water whenever and wherever.
The family moved to Lancaster County, and a bit of serendipity transpired. Wolbert’s school received a grant for a state-of-the-art TV studio. This facility enabled her to roam the school’s hallways with a shoulder-mounted Betamax camera while learning deck-to-deck editing and on-air hosting. The local television station offered Wolbert a job before she graduated high school. By age 17 she was a full-fledged broadcast cameraperson, shooting live multicamera sporting events.
That’s about when her “fishbowl grew too small,” as she puts it. In January 2000 she moved to Boston to earn her bachelor’s degree in television at Emerson College, although she switched her major to film. The college had a traditional darkroom, and she earned the yellowed fingernails and safelight vision that souping black-and-white prints in Dektol brought. Wolbert minored in environmental science and dreamed of becoming a wildlife filmmaker.
She captured the world in 2-minute-and-37-second film loads with a 16mm Bolex, which broke during her first 16mm shoot. She took it to the college’s repair guru, Bernie O’Doherty. He invited her to his obscure basement alcove full of broken cameras and tools, where she grew enchanted with mechanical cogs.
O’Doherty quickly hired her, and she learned to repair and rebuild the college’s film equipment. Wolbert was a Jumbotron camera operator at big local concert venues by night, filming acts from Ringo Starr to Jack Johnson, and by day she repaired equipment while managing a full course load.
By the fall of 2003, with her fishbowl still too constrained, she moved to Los Angeles, California, and landed an internship as a production assistant. While working on Discovery Health’s Celebrity Body Challenge, she met a contestant whose goal was to scuba dive. Wolbert was tasked with logging the MiniDV footage from his dives at Catalina Island. The local underwater scenery left her awestruck, and Wolbert became further enthralled with the world of kelp. Although she is now a skilled drysuit diver, she prefers warm water and bare skin to neoprene.
All these experiences were a prelude to her career as a mermaid. Aside from Disney’s animated Ariel and perhaps Daryl Hannah when the movie Splash was released in 1984, Wolbert might be the world’s highest-profile mermaid due to another serendipitous fork in the road.
She earned her open-water certification from the Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI) by 2004 and became a PADI model. A short time later she was an underwater camera operator on a documentary featuring freedivers Mandy–Rae Cruickshank and Martin Štěpánek in Grand Cayman, directed by Grant Graves.On this trip Wolbert attempted her first static breath hold under the tutelage of world-renowned freedive instructor Kirk Krack.
She got to observe the phenomenal athletic ability of freedivers, and monofins particularly intrigued her. When Wolbert tried Cruickshank’s monofin for the first time, the epiphany struck: “What if I made documentaries for children as a mermaid, speaking on behalf of ocean creatures?” After all, she knew how to shoot and edit and was learning to freedive. It helped that she is photogenic, articulate, and irrepressibly effervescent.
Mermaid tails weren’t readily available, so Wolbert made her own. A friend connected her with Hollywood special-effects artist Allan Holt, and together they crafted a fiberglass mold for a unique mermaid tail made of medical-grade silicone that integrated a monofin.
Wolbert soon launched her website (MermaidLinden.com) and YouTube channel (@MermaidLinden). By 2009 she was producing her educational children’s series, Mermaid Minute. Her YouTube channel has more than 50 million views.
She became an “entrepre-mer” — one of the many merm-isms she delivers with a knowing wink — entertaining and educating at kids’ events and for A-list celebrities and Make-A-Wish experiences. She had the right personality and superior water skills while donning her realistic, 50-pound silicone tail.
Wolbert continued training and eventually managed a five-minute static breath hold and 115-foot (35-meter) freedives in the ocean. She also became a freediving judge for the International Association for the Development of Apnea (AIDA) in 2006, but she was satisfied with her achievements and had no desire to compete.
Wolbert’s life isn’t all mermaids all the time. She was chair of the Reef Check Foundation, which trains citizen scientists to monitor keystone species on coral and rocky reefs worldwide and aids in kelp restoration. She recently got her Recreational Avelo Diver (RAD) certification on the Avelo System and is doing extensive scuba diving after years of primarily freediving. She loves the lightweight system and stable neutral buoyancy for more of a freediving feeling.
She also mer-markets her signature Mermaid Linden monofins, which were originally made in collaboration with Body Glove in 2013, but now her products are solely under her own brand. Her monofins are top sellers and have appeared in the world’s largest retailers. Her Reef Shark Monofin launched in 2024 and sold out on Amazon within 24 hours — evidence of a following who appreciated her original biomimetic tail, which delivered comfort and efficiency at a competitive price.
Wolbert is an inventor with two utility patents for her mermaid-specific designs, including her crown jewel: the world’s first foldable monofin.
En savoir plus
Learn more about Linden Wolbert’s mermaid career in these videos.
© Alert Diver – Q1 2025