This week's word is 'Spirit' and it's also Mer-may! So my first thought was maybe to a tie in to an existing fish spirit, and I was surprised to find there isn't much info on real concrete fish spirits. There are plenty of water spirits (...that are often people or horse shaped for some reason) but not many that out right resemble fish.

Some places suggested the salmon as a 'Native American' or 'Celtic' spirits, but sources looked super dubious (the 'healing crystals' and 'Celtic zodiac' kind of dubious. And if real, I didn't feel right doing a 'salmon mermaid spirit' lest I attracted the wrong ideas).

A few fish came up as part of legends (that inevitably get eaten) but yeah, not a lot of out right 'fish spirit'.

But my research reminded me of some so called 'spiritual' (see what I did there) fish people, and that's the legends of the 'Sea Monk' and the 'Bishop Fish':
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_monk
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishop-fish

And I felt more safe having fun drawing them. I imagine them tending the much overlooked fish spirits of the vast waters that cover our earth. Maybe people can suggest some ones they know of if they know of any.