Where would mermaid maids ever be in demand?

Why pay maids when you could make gengineered manatees that eat barnacles? Manateets act as guard dogs for your dock and have all the barnacles they can eat.

look, I don't care that they are "maids".
Maids show up looking for work. I found them work. It's not necessarily exactly what they wanted, but it's damn well necessary and probably pays higher than minimum wage.

God, the industrial ships are hundreds of thousands of dollars. EACH TIME.

there's much more that needs to be done than barnacle removal.
Also it's significantly, significantly, significantly, significantly cheaper to hire a workforce than attempt any kind of R&D in almost all timeframes besides the extremely long term.

You know I gotta ask, why were you to remove barnacles? Do they damage the hull in the long run?

Ah. So we're not talking about engineering their mermaids, we are talking about providing job opportunities to an existing indigenous mermaid population.

What can we sell to people who live mostly underwater that will make them want to have our currency?

Glassware, Metals, and earthenware. They can't really bake or smelt underwater so they would like those sort of things.

yes.

video games.
Booze.
spices.
books.
Cellphones.

Fuck up hydrodynamic properties of the hull. Makes the ship move slower and use more fuel.

>why were you to remove barnacles? Do they damage the hull in the long run?

Apparently they can create drag and cause damage. The drag cuts speed and increases fuel consumption because the ship needs to work harder to get places.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biofouling

I don't know about maids, but their bones used to be worth a pretty penny

now that I think about it, they also are in high demand on boats themselves.
WHO NEEDS fucking docks when you can have a mermaid or two on your staff constantly performing small, preventative repairs and barnacle removal?
The reduction in downtime and the savings inherent in maintenance as opposed to repair imply ENORMOUS savings for all international shipping.
I'm talking enormous enough that even we landlubbers will see the effects, with marked decreases in price on almost all goods.

Well you learn something new every day.

Lifeguards. People drowned a lot when they had to go down to the river to fetch water for cooking and cleaning, or when they had to wash their clothes.

You design a sea side city with canals for the merfolk to swim into stores with a big enough pool to accomodate them.

Resturants and stores that can cater to their needs and wants as well as giving them the cleaned out hulks of no longer useful ships for them to use in their homes.

But more so then that they'd be super Coast Guards.

Well I'd say if some wizard created his own little Rapture under the sea they'd be in high demand.

Salvaging sunken ships and their cargo. So many sunken treasures that would've been recovered.

And this thread is the exact reason behind why I wish to produce ANY intelligent underwater life.

If we can get those octopus fucks to stop dying every time they have kids and get into society, then pretty much everything we buy will be like 10% cheaper.

In settlements with significant populations of relatively wealthy mermaids, I'd think. Underwater houses still need cleaning.

>Salvaging sunken ships and their cargo. So many sunken treasures that would've been recovered.
>sunken ships often function as dungeons
>often connected to undersea caverns and tunnels
>sea monsters steal shit from ships and drag it into the tunnels

Merfolk RPG when?

It's got a wealth of playability I admit, but here's the problem.
undersea shit is not nearly as popular as land-based shit, as a genre.
And is almost universally more horror-based.
And is much harder to GM, because intrinsic knowledge of underwater shit is necessarily less than knowledge of land shit, being a landlubber species.

I actually made a city like that for my pathfinder campaign, The city was built out of a pair of dormant volcanic islands, Dwarves coming in and mining out the volcanoes for blocks to build stone pathways through the shallows and reefs that surround the two islands. 90% of the city is made of docks, barges, and stone arched walkways. The city has 4 levels, the deep caverns beneath the city, the shallows and tide levels, the dockworks, and then the mountain sides. It's become a sort of hub for the local areas, merfolk bringing seafoods and materials only they can create to trade with merchants who have set up shop, and receive shipments from across the ocean.

I'm more afraid of time

Someone's got to clean the pool.

That's not a maid. That's a repairman/dockworker.