Mermaid foraging in a kelp forest while her manatees graze.
Manatee herding is the base of the Volodiyan mermaid’s society. Their milk and meat are staples of their diet, alongside small fish caught in traps, crustaceans and shellfish.
Both mermaids and manatees prefer to live on river estuaries, but after heavy raining the pastures might get covered in mud or they could be overgrazed so they need to take their herds to deeper waters, where predation from predatorial cetaceans is a huge risk.
Volodiyan mermaids are also known for carving pools into the coast to use as salt evaporation ponds. Controling salt is essential to their society, as they use it to cook and preserve food, similar to how humans use fire.
Mermaids make their tools out of manatee leather (sometimes processed by burrying it under the sea floor, leaving a result similar to bog bodies), bones, seashells and stone and trade luxury items, like amber or pearls with humans in exchange for crafted goods. Notably no metal items, since they would last almost no time in the sea.
Mermaids normally use no clothes because of the added drag and general husle, but in special ocations they don body jewlery made out of polished seashells that sparkle like fish scales.
Other mermaid groups are specialized in fishing with nets, hunting cetaceans or aquaculture.