There are a tremendous amount of natural marvels in the world, and a great many of them are in the oceans. And what happens up here on land will, eventually, make its way down into the waters of the world. This means that any pollution we create will spread through natural processes. 

Shawn Peabody

Fortunately there are people and organizations working diligently to provide information and tactics to community leaders that will help decrease the amount of contamination. People like Shawn Peabody, a former Peace Corps volunteer, and his organizations , Live With the Sea and Blue Ventures, work on both global and local scales to help educate the world about marine conservation. “What does Shawn use to teach people about marine conservation,” you ask?

Comic Life!

Nady Ratsimbazafy

Shawn is the main author of most of the conservation comics, which are essentially handbooks to ecologically beneficial community practices. Based in Toliara, Madagascar, he develops handbooks for communities around the Western Indian Ocean. “We started using comic life just because I found it on my Mac(r). I’d been trying to do the work in Photoshop(r), but it was such a hastle- it took hours and hours for each page. With Comic Life I can just drop in the pictures and focus on the important stuff- the story!” Since Shawn is admittedly no artist he defers to the skills of a Malagasy artist who lives also in Toliara, Nady Ratsimbazafy, “Nady does all the artwork. I have no drawing skills. We sit down together and do a storyboard on paper. I try to describe what I’m imagining, but Nady brings it to life…”

 One of the ideas behind the project is to educate as efficiently and simply as possible, “We decided to use comics because of low literacy rates in most of the communities where we work as well as their basic appeal. Everybody likes comics! So people are more likely to pick them up, read them, share them, etc.”

Garth Cripps: Senior Conservation Scientist and photographer.
Elaine Odlin: Graphic designer based in UK who has done the design work for the handbooks (not the comics) pro bono.
Other Blue Ventures staff: contributed to drafts, story ideas, translations.

More about Blue Ventures Conservation –

Blue Ventures is an award-winning marine conservation organisation dedicated to conservation, education and sustainable development in tropical coastal communities. Through our marine expeditions, volunteers from around the world join us on career breaks, student gap years and internships, working closely with our field research teams, in partnership with local communities.