Meet the Miami-Based Artist Devoted to Coral Conservation

On a crisp November afternoon, Brazilian artist and marine researcher Beatriz Chachamovits stands before a group of eager children at the Jewish Community Center in Davie, Florida. When she begins by asking, “Does anyone know what a coral is?”, 25 voices chorus back countless answers. Chachamovits smiles, and it’s clear she’s in her element.

This marine-ecology lesson and coral-sculpting workshop is part of Chachamovits’s initiative Modeling the Reef, a public education project for young children in South Florida designed to create awareness around coral-reef conservation. “I want the future stewards of the ocean to fall in love with it,” she tells Vogue.

Coral reefs are one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on earth. They’ve been on the planet for an estimated 500 million years. And though they only make up 1% of the ocean, they’re home to 25% of all known marine species, including turtles, octopuses, lobsters, oysters, sea stars, and thousands of variegated fish. Reefs are essential coastal barriers that provide protection from land erosion, floods, and storms. They are valuable sources of food, medicine, economic support, and cultural heritage to more than a billion people. Yet the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts that by 2050 most coral reefs around the world will be close to gone.

Growing up in landlocked São Paulo, Chachamovits didn’t have much access to the ocean during her childhood. It wasn’t until her late- teenage years, during a trip to Bahía, a coastal state in northeastern Brazil, that she first encountered corals up close. “I remember I dove into a tiny underwater cave where the light came in beautifully, making corals of all colors and sizes shimmer,” Chachamovits recalls. “There were small schools of fish and miniature shrimps gathering sea dust. Within the glittering sand, there was a magnificent spotted ray and all sorts of creatures swaying from side to side. I had never witnessed such harmony and precision. At that moment, I realized that was my purpose. I thought, Why isn’t anyone talking about this? I felt transformed.”

Now, the Miami-based artist has devoted her career to educating others about the urgent issues related to coral-reef decline by translating scientific studies into gorgeous artworks. Through breathtaking drawings, sculptures, and installations, Chachamovits illuminates many of the dangers coral reefs confront today, including coral bleaching, plastic pollution, and ocean acidification. “Art is a powerful instrument to make others feel something, to make them care. And I’m interested in creating dry dives as a way of showing a veiled ecosystem that most people don’t have access to,” she explains.

One of her most celebrated artworks, Carcass (2020), is an entirely handmade ceramic piece that features pure white endangered coral species surrounded by camouflaged toothbrushes, water bottles, and other items of trash made from the same material. Despite its undeniable beauty, the mesmerizing milky sculpture conjures feelings of sadness as it illustrates coral bleaching, a devastating phenomenon that has affected more than 75% of the world’s reefs and has been harsh enough to kill 30% of them.

“People often think corals are minerals or plants,” Chachamovits says. “They have no idea that corals are animals.” In fact, she goes on to clarify, corals are colonial organisms composed of thousands of individual animals called polyps. Tropical corals, which live in shallow waters and make up barrier reefs, have a mutualistic symbiotic relationship with zooxanthellae algae that live on their tissues, providing food, oxygen, and extraordinary bright colors. In return, corals supply the algae with the environment they need to thrive.

Rising water temperatures due to global warming have deeply affected this relationship by causing severe stress in corals. “When corals are stressed, algae create toxins instead of food, which makes corals expel them out of their tissue. What is left is transparent tissue that reveals their calcareous bones. And that loss of color is what we know as bleaching,” Chachamovits explains. Studies have shown that stabilizing water temperatures could reverse some cases of bleaching. But without algae, corals lose their main source of food and oxygen, become susceptible to disease, and eventually die.

Bleaching is not the only threat coral reefs currently face. To Kill With Water (2017), another piece by Chachamovits, features a series of coral clay figures within water-filled acrylic tanks that, over time, melt before the viewer’s eyes. This work illustrates ocean acidification—a destabilization of the ocean’s pH caused by excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere—and demonstrates the effects of CO2 pollution on ocean creatures who, like most corals, require calcium to build their shells and skeletons.

In 2018, Chachamovits moved to Florida to be closer to the third-largest barrier reef in the world. It goes on for more than 360 miles, stretching from Dry Tortugas National Park in Key West to the St. Lucie Inlet in Martin County. This ecosystem, teeming with underwater wonders, is home to around 1,400 species, though today most of the reef is at grave risk due to overfishing, climate change, rapid development, and disease. Chachamovits is currently working on a permanent piece for the Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science that will illustrate the changes between a healthy and a struggling reef and highlight endangered species of Florida’s ecosystem, including many the Frost’s Coral Lab is currently working to protect. The artwork is set to be revealed in early 2022.

Chachamovits is intent on effectively using art as an instrument for change. “I always worry if what I’m doing is enough,” she says. The increased threats to coral often fill her with worry and hopelessness. Yet she believes these feelings propel her to create more and better work that has a tangible effect on marine conservation. Beyond stoking awareness and action from her viewers, Chachamovits’s artificial reef sculptures have played a part in rebuilding damaged reefs.

Since 2019, when she created her first artificial reef, To Replenish With Water, for the Underwater Museum of Art in Florida, she has been enamored with these human-made structures meant to be placed under the ocean to mirror actual coral reef environments. “Artificial reefs perform a crucial role in deflating tourism on natural reefs. They provide new structures for corals to attach to and grow, they generate nursing spaces and new homes for reef animals, and help control sea levels in coral depleted areas,” she explains. Though they are highly expensive to make and entail numerous permits to be deployed underwater, Chachamovits’s goal is to share the power of these installations with new generations. She is currently fundraising for the final phase of her Modeling the Reef initiative to result in a large-scale reef model, using pieces created by her students. The installation will ultimately sit at the bottom of the ocean and serve as an artificial base for real coral growth.

Despite the devastating reality corals face today, Chachamovits’s work with young students is one thing that helps her believe in a better future. “Teaching is one of my gifts,” she says. “By teaching, we can inspire younger generations to understand the problems they’re living in today. We are in uncharted territories, so as an environmental artist and a concerned human for our planet, teaching is one of the things I can do to give us a chance.”