Mural : Joe Pagac’s Harboring Beauty

Downtown Tucson Mural : Joe Pagac’s Harboring Beauty

This is another long Joe Pagac’s mural. This time on the back of 191 Toole, pretty close to his Borderlands Brewery mural.

At mylocalnews.us, Makenna Paule reported that Joe Pagac explained why he hired homeless to pose for this mural: “They were really great to work with,” he says. “They just have such great faces… Their faces really tell a story.” I love the juxtaposition of the godlike giant hands protecting the clownfish.

While not on an endangered list that I could find, after Nemo was released, despite the movie’s message that wild fish should be left in the ocean, catching clownfish increased dramatically because people wanted their own Nemo.

Although some clownfish are being bred in captivity, more than 1 million clownfish are taken from reefs annually with more than 400,000 shipped to the USA. Where people can capture them more easily, the clownfish have gone locally extinct in the Phillipines, parts of Thailand and parts of Sri Lanka.  (Andrews, Washington Post)

It’s not just capturing clownfish that is the problem but the harvesting of anemones as well. According to one study, “The low density of anemones on exploited reefs accounted for over 80% of the reduced density of anemonefish at those sites. ” (Ambrose et al, Coral Reefs, 2005)

In this beautiful mural, Pagac honors two at-risk populations.

References:

‘Finding Nemo’ wasn’t so entertaining for real clownfish. Now conservationists worry about ‘Finding Dory’
by Travis M. Andrews, Washington Post, May 18, 2016

Population impacts of collecting sea anemones and anemonefish for the marine aquarium trade in the Philippines
by Richard F. Ambrose, Craig S. Shuman, Gregor Hodgson, Coral Reefs (2005) 24: 564–573

Joe Pagac – Custom Murals, Fine Art and Fabrication

The Man Behind the Mural: Joe Pagac
By Makenna Paule on Real News, Real Local (no date)

Local muralist paints Tucson brighter
By Baraha Elkhalil, Arizona Sonora News, April 30, 2017

Much better photos of Joe Pagac’s underwater mural
Jerry Peek, The Tucson Mural Project,  Novembr 24, 2017

Blog Hops/Linkups:

Awww Mondays
Comedy Plus

Monday Mural
Colourful World

Jo’s Monday Walk : Photos from a walk, any walk.  Actually this walk had a bunch of murals on it posted on different days.  Look above in the first paragraph to see some of the other murals.

You can use the search bar to search Amazon as I did with “ecology murals book”. Sometimes I do “book” as a search term or sometimes I limit the search to the “book” category. Results can be a little different depending on which technique I use. I am an Amazon affiliate; this has no effect on your price. Prices remain the same. See the sidebar for affiliate disclosures.