True Fijian Mermaid

My eldest sister, who just celebrated her 29th Birthday, was always really into Mermaids and I told her about what my buddies were doing and she began telling me all about the Selkies etc that she loved reading about and even dug out a couple of her old drawings of mermaids. She reminded me of the Fijian Mermaid (a monkey sewn into a fish's body) exhibited in the 19th Century and then told me about the shark god of Fiji that would be more accurate. 

The story is an interesting one about Dakuwaqa or Dakuwanga and states how he protects people after his attempt to conquer the island of Kadavu but another god thwarted him by changing into an octopus - the other god made him swear to protect the island instead of conquer it and so he did. He can change form of course and is often closely linked to the Sand Tiger Shark - but he is said to have the true form of a muscular Fijian Man but the upper torso of a shark! 

My "mermaid" here is a group kind of based around that legend that I call that Dakuwangan, a special group of mermaids that have he lower half of a shark and work with the sharks to protect the animals of the ocean from the land-dwellers. They are noble and brave warriors who keep to their own kind and can be incredibly social or solitary. Their main home is a kingdom made of brilliant corals protected from above by a crown of coral like an umbrella thorn acacia within an Atul island (that's where a volcano island has collapsed into a reef system) in the South pacific. They are sworn enemies of the Caecilian types (octopus and squid based merfolk) and though they do not often venture into really deep water, they have to perform a rite of passage at a certain age that means they have to go outside of the corals and bring back some proof of wherever they go. They are easily recognised by most of the other merfolk too. 

This one in the drawing is the current prince Kavekini*, but I'm not good at drawing humans and wanted to make him look more fishy for now whilst I improved my skills. I hope you like him anyway! 

*I've been told Kavekini is a Fijian male name meaning Courage

Little Mermaid Universe (C) Disney

Dakuwaqa - A Character in Fijian Mythology and belonging to them

Ideas & Doodle (C)