The Author

Michelle Mech has been working on environmental issues for the past 12 years.  In 2013, she started to concentrate her work on the oceans, and created educational material in both English and Spanish on the impacts of human activities on the oceans – geared to high school and first year university students, and also adults.

More recently she decided that one of the ways to influence people to change their ‘plastic habit’ was to educate young children and change attitudes at the ground level.

Through Ocean Champions she empowers young children to take action and to educate and influence the adults in their life at the same time.

In all, Michelle has donated thousands of hours of her own time to help to keep our oceans healthy.

Michelle’s other oceans educational material is available at https://nereida.org/, as well as posts on how it has been utilized and recent research and findings.

Michelle lives on Salt Spring Island, B.C.

The illustrator

Ian Fry was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. He studied illustration and design at Glasgow School of Art, graduating in 1978. After freelancing as a book and advertising illustrator in Scotland and later, London, he moved to Canada in 1985.

For ten years he worked as an independent illustrator in Vancouver’s Gastown district.  In 1994 he decided to devote more time to painting and rented a studio at Kleewyk, North Vancouver, creating several very large paintings for a Japanese collector.

On moving to Bowen Island in 1995, painting became a full time occupation and the Howe Sound scenery featured in many works until 2009 when a temporary move to Scotland saw Ian painting and selling in three galleries there before returning to B.C., the part of the world closest to his heart.

Ian has exhibited his art in the lower mainland, Vancouver Island, Whistler, Squamish and Vancouver.  His paintings are found in corporate and private collections in Canada, U.K, Japan, Germany, Israel and USA, where he also designed a large mural in Dallas, Texas.

He lives in the Comox Valley on Vancouver island.  His website is: https://www.ianfryart.com/