About

Bycatch is a project I completed throughout the 2023-2024 academic year. Learning about human actions that harm the environment is frustrating, especially when you feel like you're either contributing to the issue or letting it happen without doing anything about it. I was in Portland, Oregon last summer for an ecological research conference and one day I decided to take a bus to the Oregon coast. While on that bus, I was reading the book Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer and came to a section about all of the species killed in the process of creating a single plate of sushi (with just one target species fish). The section continued for a page and a half, simply listing all of these bycatch species. Learning more about this issue (which I was originally introduced to through a course called Oceanography taught by Professor Bruce Monger), while driving through one of the most beautiful forested areas I have ever seen was enough to push me to try to do something to combat this issue.

I think art is a great way to spread ideas, educate, and advocate. I got the idea to create this series of oil paintings depicting a few of the species impacted by bycatch. I worked on this project throughout the school year, painting on free weeknights, weekends, and school breaks. Once the paintings were complete, I did some more research and wrote the written sections that are found by the painting display. My hope was that people would be drawn in by the paintings and find themselves wanting to learn more about the issue. This project is displayed in Mann Library, where I hope it can inspire personal changes in viewers to protect the biodiversity of our oceans.

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