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KatherineKei — The Invaluable
#orca #srkw #cetacean #dolphin #ocean #salmon
Published: 2017-12-17 21:04:40 +0000 UTC; Views: 15316; Favourites: 483; Downloads: 74
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Description
The InvaluableMy newest piece for the Orca-Zine - a charity book which is going to be available at Superpod 6 - www.orcasuperpod.com - All profits from the sale of this book will be split equally and donated to the Center for Whale Research and Orca Network!
In case if for some reason you can't open the link, then listen here, friends! "Superpod is an annual gathering on San Juan Island, Washington that is open to the public and attended by an international group of scientists, filmmakers, authors, journalists, former trainers, naturalists, orca advocates and and people who want to see killer whales in their natural home. The gathering is a combination of socializing, whale watching, learning, and sharing ideas & actions to help protect orcas in their natural habitat and bring an end to cetacean captivity."
Since SRKWs run out of salmon quite fast, I thought of making an artwork that would speak about it. For the industries salmon is one of the ways to make money, but for the whales it's a source of energy and life. For the orcas salmons are invaluable.
There are ways to help SRKWs:
- Adopt a Southern Resident killer whale
- Contact Politicians
- Tell the Columbia river System Operations to breach the lower Snake River dams
- What can you personally do?
WIP - fav.me/dbx0lkn
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Comments: 35
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I own that book now 
your artwork is one of my favorites <3 
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Oh geez Cio this has to be one of my favourite pieces of yours - I don't quite dare say THE favourite because lord knows what gems you've made that I've shamefully forgotten about, but it might very well be. This is glorious in the most literal sense. I've always been impressed with your ability to show such diversity in palettes for your killer whale paintings (instead of my everlasting green, blue and bluish green), but this one is just heavenly. Warm sunset red, shimmering gold, combines with the deep dark blue of space YES PLEASE. It's a very fine example of how well contrasting colours can work together. And most of all it's just the atmosphere that grabs me. The secondary lighting giving the whale his golden glow, kelp rising from the waves like a vision of a holy dream, the sheer bulk and impressive majesty of that enormous bull floating towards the stars... And the way you visualised your message is A+. Just the piece combined with the title would inform even those who'd never heard of SRKWs. And, as a last but ever-present compliment on your work: those details are to die for. THE WATER. THE SALMON. THE STARS. Absolutely magnificent.
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;a; This is 1 of my favs by far, Cio.
I love the composition.
I am mesmerised by the golden salmon, I dearly miss this sort of thing in my own art. ty for inspiring.^^
I also love how your wips come together. *o*
These leave me sort of speechless. :'3
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REPLYING TO LAST YEAR COMMENTS
If I actually inspired you, then I'm waiting for them new pieces <3
And oh those wips, perhaps some day I will level up and get to speed-painting videos, however I'm not sure when will I set everything up for it
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X'DDDD
:'D With my lack of motivation (and unwell recently) I wouldn't get hopes raised. OTL
Aww, love. c: If you do.
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Very rare I get so impressed like here right now. Just magnificat!
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Oh my goodness, this is just so beautiful. You have such a way of conveying your message, it's very inspiring and honestly gave me goosebumps. I really love the way you drew the water and golden salmon too. I hope all this help can pay off before it's too late
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Messages like yours inspire a lot, thank you so much!
While I'm not really optimistic about what will happen to the SRKW's community in a few years, I hope that there's something that can be done to make their lives better. They've gone through too much already.
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It's no problem!
And yeah 
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Stunning. Love the colours, pose, composition...everything. And of course, the idea behind the piece. Wow. <3
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Oh woah this looks stunning! The lighting is absolutely fantastic! Well done!
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Lighting was tough, and I'm glad you like it! That means I did my best
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This is gorgeous! I really wish more people in the cetacean community would incorporate salmon into their whale art, it's such a great way to bring up salmon issues. If we love orcas, we need to love salmon just as much, they are so critical to killer whales and the entire ecosystem.
I love the use of colors as well. It can be hard to use warm colors in paintings of water animals, so I always love seeing when people do that as well! The colors of this are amazing, as is the pose. This entire piece is energetic and inspiring - lovely work.
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Yeah, it'd be nice to see more art that brings up salmon issues, however I also understand (cause I literally experienced it a week ago) that in painting such small elements like fish take a lot of time to be done, so it's a hard task from the start.
And thank you for your kind words about the art itself! I've spent a lot of time adusting the colors so they don't look to saturated and overwhelming or bleak and grey. When I finished the rendering, I saved a few variants of the picture with different contrast and hues and such, cause by that time my eyes were so tired that I couldn't understand if everything was cool because it actually is or because my eyes trick me. :"D
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It's beautiful
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Salmon farmed in open net pens in places like British Columbia (where the SRKW live) does WAY more harm to the environment than fishing for salmon does there. The sustainability of wild vs farmed is really not a black and white issue. A lot depends on the species of salmon, the method of fishing/farming, etc. Overfishing isn't very responsible for Pacific salmon decline, although that may seem surprising. The much bigger issues are habitat loss and degradation. All kinds of stuff - dams, pollution, irresponsible salmon farms, logging, and overuse of pesticides - are contributing to this.
A good starting point to figure out which kinds of seafood are sustainable vs not is seafoodwatch.org. If you live in Canada, the site seafood.ocean.org is more specifically tailored to fit Canada.
The bad news with sustainable seafood is that, in many places, seafood labeling laws are very lacking. Stores and restaurants often aren't required to list things like binomial names, whether the fish is wild-caught or farmed, or what methods were used to catch/farm it. This can make it really difficult to make informed decisions, but take a look at the guides I listed, and just do the best you can! If you're really interested in the issue of sustainable seafood, definitely raise awareness about the existing seafood guides and our need for widespread, comprehensive, and strictly-enforced seafood labeling laws.
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I care much for sustainable seafood as I eat much seafood but I live in Europe (France, more specifically) and the salmon I buy is mostly farmed in Norway or Scotland. I want to find out if those fisheries are sustainable or not, or should I just buy wild salmon? The same is with mussels but as I live near the sea, much seafood is locally fished and I can have a very close look at farming/fishing methods. Here people and government care for the environment and also binomial names are written on labels (which I always read of course). So I guess it's easier to find sustainable seafood in Europe but I might be wrong. I would like to enforce strict labeling - the situation is pretty good here but it could be better - but it is very different from the US/Canada situation. If you have any info of sustainable seafood in Europe, feel free to share with me, I would like to know what can I do!
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Certain parts of Europe have REALLY good labeling laws, so that's awesome!
Here's a seafood guide for France, made by the WWF! www.consoguidepoisson.fr/ Seafood Watch is also very comprehensive and should be fairly applicable. It seems a bit more in-depth than the French guide as well. Seafood Watch is really handy because it has an actual app for phones and such, which is helpful with shopping, but the French guide would probably be better at coming up with good alternatives. I'm not sure what kind of salmon is available in France so I can't advise you much, but the WWF guide might be able to point you in the right direction!
It looks like farmed Atlantic salmon from Scotland/Norway is very nuanced. Some of it is on the yellow list, which is sort of the gray area between good and bad. Yellow-list farmed salmon from Norway apparently has a certain brand, "Blue Circle Foods." Scotland farmed salmon is okay if it's specifically from the Orkney Islands. Any Scotland/Norway farmed salmon that doesn't meet those criteria is on the red list, which is to be avoided.
Yeah, the US and Canada are horrific. Restaurants can list seafood under vague terms like "whitefish" or "red fish," which is crazy. Most stores at least give the common name of the fish, where it came from, and whether it was wild/farmed, but restaurants don't do any of those things in most cases. :/ And making stores and restaurants list what methods were used to catch/farm it is really important as well. Consumer choices can make a big difference but the lenient laws make it very hard to make informed decisions here. ; - ; Canada in particular has pretty much 0 seafood labeling laws.
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Thank you so much, this guide will be very helpful for me for sure
It's really a shame that there is practically no labeling laws in Canada, it means people are kept in the dark about the origins of their food ;_; I wish there were more, at least I live in a country where the people get the info the need, even if not all the info.
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No problem!! I'm just glad I could help. Consumer choices are really underrated, they can be SO effective in making real changes in industries!
Yeah. I live in the US, which is a bit better, but not a lot. We're in desperate need of some reform here in North America.
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Yeah, many people don't believe consumer choices really count but they do
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this is stunning!!!!!! i wish i could buy the book ):
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Honestly, same! I wish I'd buy the book or go to the Superpod, but I'm soooo broke...
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doesn't help most of these events take place in the US meaning it would cost even more which is a shame ):
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sw this on your insta story XD
"This file is BIG"
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