Iowa Loses Its Only Working Mermaid After Aquarium Evicted From Mall

Disclaimer: This article is based on actual news from the real world – honestly! However, it has been sprinkled with a healthy dose of satire.

WEST DES MOINES, Iowa — Blue Zoo Aquarium at Jordan Creek Town Center will hold its final day of operation on Monday after being evicted from its lease for failure to pay rent. The closure will end public tank performances by Angie Cunningham, a Des Moines resident who is, by available evidence, the only PADI-certified mermaid instructor currently employed by an Iowa aquarium. As of Tuesday, she will be the only PADI-certified mermaid instructor currently not employed by an Iowa aquarium. 

She earned a PADI scuba mermaid instructor certification, which involved coursework in underwater rescue, emergency response, and the ability to drag an unconscious adult to the surface while her own legs were zipped into a single fin. She passed all of it. The monofin, which is a piece of scuba equipment engineered around the assumption that the human body has come to terms with being a fish, was the lightest part of the test. It is also part of about 20 pounds of costume she wears in the tank. Few people in Iowa hold this certification. After Tuesday, the number will continue to be few, and none of them will have a tank.

Blue Zoo opened in 2024 as an interactive family attraction featuring sharks, stingrays, reptiles, and birds, and then proceeded to spend its short tenure in Des Moines collecting incidents the way other businesses collect Yelp reviews. The state previously investigated the facility for animal welfare concerns, including the death of a parakeet and a separate incident in which a guest was bitten by a bamboo shark. The Association of Zoos and Aquariums, the accreditation body that exists for exactly this purpose, does not list Blue Zoo as accredited. Court documents indicate the aquarium is being evicted for not paying its rent, which Blue Zoo has attributed to a “substantial rent increase” and not to any of the other contributing factors a reasonable person might question.

She remains hopeful. She told reporters she sometimes feels like Santa Claus, in that children come up and hug her and tell her mermaid secrets. It is a generous comparison, except that Santa Claus only gets evicted from malls due to HR violations, the kind usually racked up by youth pastors.

Sunday is Cunningham’s final performance at Blue Zoo. Admission will be free while capacity allows, in keeping with the aquarium’s longstanding tradition of giving things away at the end. The bamboo shark, who has elected not to comment, will not be in attendance.