Initially, she didn’t dare get any closer than the rocks at Pendour Cove near the village, but as the week’s went on she grew bolder and finally became so brave she dressed as a noblewoman and attended a church service. I don’t post very official stuff there, I just post selfies, uh, pictures from my everyday life and travels and so on, so you might like to go over there and follow me. It’s also said that the mermaid was seen several years later by a fisherman, who had inadvertently dropped anchor in front of the door to her house. Within the tale, a young squire’s son named Matthew Trewhella sings at the church and is renowned for his exceptional voice. Firstly, the government runs MPAs on a ‘feature-based approach’, whereby regulators need to provide proof, both of an environment (‘feature’) which is worth protecting and that it has already been degraded.

The bank has been the cause of many shipwrecks, notably the HMS Whiting (whose attack on Fort McHenry inspired the American national anthem – for more information, visit www.According to the tale she was forced into a barrel as punishment which was then nailed shut and cast into the ocean. Every year, hundreds of tourists flock to this quiet coastal village just to visit St Senara's, for it is home to a famous folkloric artefact, the Mermaid's chair.

It’s a pretty neat encapsulation of why MPAs are a flawed concept, often subject to less than perfect execution.

Our school is only 20 minutes away from Zennor, we brought the story to life with a class visit to the village! The captain tried to explain that Mathew looked quite happy with his life, but the people wouldn’t listen. Their voices could still be heard singing together from beneath the waves, and it was said that Matthew would warn of rough seas by singing low. Much of his poetry centres on Cornish stories, such as ‘The Ballad of Charlotte Dymond’, which narrates a notorious murder in Bodmin in 1844.