We all know the adage “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” I’ve always loved this saying because it a) justifies my thrift-shopping enthusiasm b) encompasses the concept of repurposing goods, and c) describes one of my all-time favourite hobbies: beachcombing.
I am lucky enough to have been born and raised on Vancouver Island, on the traditional territories of the K’ómoks First Nation, surrounded by green rainforests and the bountiful Pacific Ocean. My childhood was spent living and working on our family’s wooden schooner, the Fearless II, on which we fished for salmon, herring, and halibut. This lifestyle took me to some of the most remote corners of the vast British Columbia coast; some of my first wobbly steps were on beaches that very few people ever see.
We are incredibly lucky to live in a place where remoteness and wilderness are still the rule and not the exception. But even in seemingly untouched places, there can be piles and piles of plastics.
Coveted treasures in the sea
Many years ago, most of the human-made flotsam and jetsam was Japanese glass or hand-carved wooden fishing floats; these were coveted treasures, and my friends and I used to race along the slippery logs to hunt for them at the high-tide line.
Today, I still work as a deckhand on my family’s halibut boat, as a commercial diver, and as an underwater videographer/photographer. When I travel to the remote beaches of my childhood, the vast majority of what I find is Styrofoam, plastic bottles, and endless tiny shards of microplastics. I still find myself enthusiastically hunting for treasure amid the mounds of plastic garbage, and one of the treasures I look for these days are lost buoys.
At first it was more of a collection compulsion; I hung up strings of beautifully weathered old fishing floats on our fence. But one day I decided to start painting one with my favourite coastal scene: a lush kelp forest. I have spent countless hours in such kelp forests on our coast. On sunny days, the sunbeams sparkle through the undulating kelp fronds, casting the seafloor below in glimmering light. These forests are important habitat for many marine species, filled with an abundance of life, from tiny invertebrates to mammoth cetaceans. When I’m in a kelp forest, I feel as if I am swimming beneath a golden stained-glass ceiling.
It was this treasured feeling I tried to reproduce on the trash I had found on the beach.
Turning my passion into a business
Soon, friends and family were interested in my creations. I painted them for birthdays and Christmas, weddings and housewarming gifts, but before long the demand outstripped my ability to paint them fast enough. I wanted to make sure that each piece reflected the time I put into it (a single piece can take anywhere from 10 to 25 hours to complete) along with my coastal roots, my ethics, and my growing eco-anxiety, as well as information about our local sustainable fisheries. So I would write up a letter describing where each buoy was found on the coast, who found it, what local species were painted on it, and what fishery it might have been used for.
I want people to understand that while I can use buoys as my canvases due to their very paintable nature, other plastics that we use in our daily lives— like drink bottles, chip bags, plastic wrapping, and Styrofoam—also end up in our marine ecosystems. Each year an estimated 8.8 million tons of marine debris enters the world’s oceans in the form of a wide range of industrial, residential, and single-use plastics.
The lasting impact of plastic
I want people to think about where the plastics they use every day end up, and the lasting impact they have, not only in our landfills, but also in our oceans. Last year scientists found a plastic bag in the deepest point in the ocean, the Mariana Trench, at a depth of 10,975 metres. Microplastics can be found in every single part of our blue planet, including in us (they’ve been discovered in human blood and breast milk). These discoveries can leave me feeling hopeless and anxious. While consuming fewer plastics and advocating for the abolishment of single-use plastics outside of medical applications are important steps we all can take, I wanted to do something more tangible and unique to my skills and experiences.
In 2020/2021, small ship tour operators, the provincial government, and the First Nations of the Central and North Coast created and collaborated on the Marine Debris Removal Initiative (MDRI). Small tour boat operators set out with staff and volunteers to collect marine debris off some of the most remote areas of our coast in the traditional territories of the Wuikinuxv, Nuxalk, Heiltsuk, Kitasoo/Xai’xais, and Gitga’at First Nations. The MDRI collected approximately 210 tonnes (or 463,890 lbs) of garbage. Trish and Eric Boyum of Ocean Adventures Charter Co., who participated in the expeditions, kindly brought me back a 6’x6’x6’ supersack full of buoys found in the Normansell Islands to paint.
Donating proceeds to environmental causes
As well as diverting ocean garbage from landfills, I donate 10 per cent of my sales to individual coastal charities. When I paint an orca, I donate to OrcaLab; when I paint a kelp forest, I donate to the Ucluelet Aquarium’s Marine Debris Research Initiative fund; when I paint salmon, I donate to a multitude of excellent salmon research organizations here on the coast. My customers are therefore directly contributing toward making our coastal ecosystems healthier and more resilient.
Growing up with an artist/environmentalist mother and a marine biologist/commercial fisherman father, I’ve never found it difficult to bridge the gap between harvesting sustainable seafood for a living and conserving the health of our marine ecosystems. One of my first memories is of being strapped snugly to my mother’s back as she painted salmon on storm drains—a reminder to all that our actions on land directly impact the life in our streams and oceans.
As a part of the fishing community at the Comox marina, I was always made keenly aware that our well-being and the food on our table relied directly on the health of our coastal ecosystem. The strongest supporters of my buoy art have come from within the fishing community all over the coast.
I feel incredibly grateful today to be able to connect my art, my passion for marine life, and my community through my lost (and now found) buoys.
