Explore a sea of beauty

Image Caption “Scleractinian corals …are able to precipitate calcium carbonate from seawater to form rigid skeletons… It therefore feels essential that the medium of my work be ceramic, as calcium carbonate also happens to be a common ingredient in clay and glaze materials. Not only does the chemical structure of my work parallel that of a natural reef, but brittle ceramic anemone tentacles and coral branches break easily if improperly handled, similar to the delicate bodies of living reef organisms.” (Photo: Rebecca Riffkin/ AAAS)

Image Caption Renowned marine life artist Wyland changed the way people think about our environment when he started painting life-size whales on the sides of buildings in the 1980s. Wyland is a multifaceted artist, scuba diver, educator, and explorer. It is estimated that more than a billion people view his murals every year, making his artistic style and passion for ocean conservation widely recognizable. (Photo: Rebecca Riffkin/ AAAS)

Image Caption The photographer says, “The oceans are in trouble. There are some serious problems out there that I believe are not clear to many people. My hope is to continually find new ways of creating images and stories that both celebrate the sea yet also highlight environmental problems. Photography can be a powerful instrument for change.” (Photo: Rebecca Riffkin/ AAAS)

Image Caption “Drawing with thread, my work asks questions about how our memories evolve over time, spotlighting the search for real connections to others and the drive for every creature to find its place in the world. Vintage maps and charts give my work a connection to the past, providing an emotional history for my subjects.” (Photo: Rebecca Riffkin/ AAAS)

Image Caption “I hope this work will help viewers see the connections between our decorative representations of nature and the real organisms that inspire those representations. My approach to making these works, particularly the Wonders series, has been to push the interrelationship between beauty, survival, and complexity of form through a purposeful layering of materials—taking surface texture, mark-making and color into careful consideration.” (Photo: Rebecca Riffkin/ AAAS)

Image Caption “Organisms adapt and evolve in response to their environment, each one finding a unique solution to meet environmental pressures. When the ocean temperature shifts even by a single degree, these solutions, arrived at over millions of years, can suddenly become inadequate for the species’ survival. As I have emphasized in previous bodies of work about war and invasion, I find this point of stress-induced change intriguing because there are such obvious correlations to our own behaviors in our ‘environment’ of ever-shifting societal and political structures.” This piece is part of her Anoxia series, which wants to raise awareness about the negative consequences human actions have on the oceans. (Photo: Rebecca Riffkin/ AAAS)

Image Caption “In my ongoing series of Watershed paintings, I present a humorous ironic taxonomy of our new post-consumer creatures of the sea. In these paintings of our castaways from grocery shelf life, synthetic products proudly and cheerily proclaim their natural rights as they strand and break apart on inter-tidal coasts. As gyres of garbage swirl in the Pacific, plastic becomes the new sand.” (Photo: Rebecca Riffkin/ AAAS)