"Biscayne" is a painting created for my Heritage solo exhibition at Thinkspace Projects (Los Angeles, CA) in June 2023. In this show, I interpreted the most representative and unique natural spaces of the US. This one, a great hammerhead shark as the main character, represents the rich biodiversity of Coastal Florida and the importance of this ecosystem for sharks.
Coastal Florida presents a variety of reef, mangrove, and estuary habitats that provide essential living and breeding grounds for a variety of fish species, and these waters contain high densities of marine life and ecologically important marine predators such as sharks of all kinds, from Hammerhead to Tiger and even Great Whites. Great hammerheads, which can live to be over 30 years old, have a mysterious childhood, likely growing up in a habitat that is safe from predators and has an abundance of food, which marine biologists call a nursery. A new study found that a small section of Biscayne Bay appears to be a previously unknown hammerhead “nursery,” the first of its kind identified on the entire American Atlantic coast. However, Northern Biscayne Bay is a highly polluted, degraded, and urbanized environment.
Every year, humans kill an estimated 100 million sharks. The threats we pose are many, for example, by-catch: the accidental killing of sharks in fishing gear intended for other species. Illegal poaching and hunting: selling shark fins for soup and sportfishing for shark-jaw trophies. Or by nets: placed along coastlines to keep sharks away from beaches. Removing sharks in large numbers can have ripple effects that throw entire ecosystems out of balance. It’s a global issue that affects all marine ecosystems in the world, and that must be urgently addressed.
Dulk
