Shawn O'Hara: Welcome everybody. My guest today is Simon Morris. He is a sculptor who lived and sculpted on Salt Spring Island for 30 years and is now based on Vancouver Island. He was inducted as a signature member of the Artists for Conservation Foundation in February 2020, and inducted as a member of the College of Fellows of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society in October 2021. He is the creator of two nine-foot-tall underwater bronze mermaids: the Emerald Princess in Mermaid Cove in Saltery Bay near Powell River, British Columbia, not that far from us, and Amphitrite at Sunset House Grand Cayman, as well as The Guardian of The Reef placed underwater at Divetech Resort in West Bay Grand Cayman. Simon has also worked concurrently in the diving industry since 1973 for many of the major companies, including GM at Scuba Pro Canada, GM at Scuba Pro Canada International Product Development Manager for Scuba Pro, VP of Product Development and VP Product Development Manager for Bayer, and retired as the Sales Manager for Shearwater Research Inc. Welcome, Simon. 

Simon Morris: Thank you, Shawn. It is nice to be here. 

Shawn O'Hara: You are known for these breathtaking underwater bronzes and environmental pieces, but at the end of the day, you are also running a business in Canada. How did you first find yourself blending sculpture, diving, and conservation into a commercial practice? A lot of us do not think of those in the same light. When did you start to realize that regulations and permits were going to be a big part of getting your work into the water and into public spaces? 

Simon Morris: Shawn, I guess the answer to the first question of how I found blending sculpture, diving, and conservation into commercial practice was purely by accident, just because I love sculpting and I love the ocean and scuba diving. I started to realize that regulations were going to be a part of this almost immediately, but it started with the mermaid in Powell River. I have loved the ocean and the idea of scuba diving as long as I can remember, but I had to wait until I was 15 in 1973 to become scuba certified. By that time, I had already started doing abstract welded steel sculpture with marine themes with an oxyacetylene torch, and my dad set up a welding studio in our basement for me. I started this when I was about 13, two years before I started scuba diving, but I had already been free diving for years, and I guess my sculpture, my passion for diving in the ocean, and my love of marine life were all intertwined from the start. 

Simon Morris: I started selling my earlier works in welded steel to friends and local dive shops right at the beginning, and in fact it helped me save the money to buy my first set of gear when I got certified. My first bronze sculpture was the nine-foot-tall mermaid, the Emerald Princess, sunk in a small cove in Saltery Bay near Powell River in March of 1989, within the confines of the Provincial Park. Shortly afterwards, the park was renamed Mermaid Cove Provincial Park, and it immediately became apparent that we were going to need a permit to place her in the ocean. But the idea was novel at the time, this is 1988–1989, and nobody really knew how to approach it, so finally the government just asked us to apply for an Ocean Dumping Permit. I objected to that, saying she was a nine-foot-tall piece of art, not a piece of garbage to be dumped, and finally they said, “Couldn’t you just do it on a Sunday when no one is at work?” So we did that and this worked, and although it was a very public event with at least a thousand spectators on the beach and several layers of government from local Powell River representatives all the way up to Terry Huberts, who was the current Minister of Parks at the time, there was no further issue with the authorities. 

Shawn O'Hara: That is quite the process and wanting to use the Ocean Dumping Permit. 

Simon Morris: That is all they had at the time. And now there is a process, and people understand it a bit better, but back then it was completely new territory for everybody involved. 

Shawn O'Hara: Was the park renamed Mermaid Cove Provincial Park because of your sculpture in there? 

Simon Morris: Correct, and it was actually added to the Canadian Hydrographic Survey, so if you have a marine chart of the area, Mermaid Cove is now listed in the official charts of the area. That mermaid was absolutely a life-changing event and put me on the map literally and figuratively. 

Shawn O'Hara: Yes, it would. Now, when you install a 13-foot bronze guardian or a mermaid on a reef, that is probably not something you just quietly drop off a boat at night or on a Sunday in BC when they do not have regulations. Today, can you take us through what it now takes from, say, the permits, the environmental assessments, any of the local approvals to put a sculpture in the ocean in Canada or anywhere else? 

Simon Morris: Sure. It definitely varies by location, and in Canada it is the most complicated, dealing with not only several layers of government, but most importantly the blessing of the relevant First Nations community is critical. It is the first question asked by each of the other agencies; if you do not have the blessing of the First Nations, there is no point in trying to go any further, and in Grand Cayman, where I have two pieces underwater already, the process is admittedly complicated and detailed but relatively straightforward. It requires the completion of what is called a standard Coastal Works application process, which focuses mainly on environmental safety and issues, and once the application is complete, it is presented to the Department of Environment for review. If it satisfies their requirements, they forward it to the cabinet of the government for final approval, and we just received approval in October for my latest sculpture for Cayman, The Angel of The Reef, and that process took about 30 months. In the United States I am currently working on a project to install between six and ten large bronze sculptures in an underwater columbarium, which is the proper name for a memorial place for cremated remains, and it is near Destin on the Florida Panhandle. 

Simon Morris: This region has created a mandate for themselves to become the number one artificial scuba diving destination in the United States, and the seabed in the region and the permit process is under the authority of the US Army Corps of Engineers and Okaloosa County. We had tried for 18 months to get a permit in Miami-Dade County with no success or progress whatsoever, and once we heard about Okaloosa County and Destin we submitted the application for the Poseidon Memorial Reef and had the permit granted in two weeks. Now fundraising for the sculptures is happening, but you also mentioned other places or putting a permanent sculpture in the ocean or in a public place in Canada or abroad. I was fortunate enough to receive a commission to create a life-size bronze sculpture of Captain Henry Larson, who was an RCMP Sergeant and skipper and captain of the RCMP vessel St. Roch, and St. Roch is the vessel that is housed in the large A-frame building at the Vancouver Maritime Museum in Kitsilano. Some people who saw the unveiling of my sculpture there happened to be part of the Winston Churchill Society in North Vancouver, and they came to me and asked me if I would be interested in doing a sculpture of Winston Churchill. 

Simon Morris: I was originally born in England, and so I jumped at the chance, and the most amazing thing was we could not find any public place in the Lower Mainland who felt that Winston Churchill was, quote unquote, relevant today. They had all the money in the world, and normally when people approach me for a project they are full of enthusiasm and they do not have the money to pull it off, but the Winston Churchill Society had no trouble at all and yet we could not find a place publicly in Vancouver that was willing to accept a sculpture of Churchill. That kind of shocked me because he had quite an influence on the western world, and yet time and again he was considered to be not relevant enough to have a sculpture of him in a public space. There were some people who said it was politically unsuitable to have the Prime Minister of another country represented here, and there were a number of other excuses, but they all shocked me. Eventually we got permission from a hotel in Vancouver that was building a bar called Winston’s with a very British theme, and they said that we could put it at the entrance to the bar, but they wanted him holding a scotch glass and a cigar. 

Simon Morris: Churchill’s great-great-granddaughter has complete global control over images used to portray Churchill, and because he was a known alcoholic she will not have anything to do with anything representing alcohol to do with him, and she would not approve that design. The hotel bar said no scotch glass, no sculpture, and so what would have been an absolutely lovely opportunity just faded away. There was no location for that and no statue then to Churchill, and it struck me that time and again he was considered to be not relevant enough to have a sculpture of him. There were also people who said it was politically unsuitable to have the Prime Minister of another country represented here, and there were a number of excuses, but they all shocked me. 

Simon Morris: At the risk of getting into the weeds today, and I will keep it very brief, in recent history in Canada, the United States, and abroad, sculptures of historical figures whose attitudes, statements, and quotes have become unpopular are being torn down and removed and sometimes destroyed. I have a problem with that for two reasons, and first, as an artist, there are pieces of art that will not be recreated and that represent a lot of work and love and passion by the artist. The second thing is the age-old quote of, if you do not know your history, you are doomed to repeat it, so my personal belief in all of that is that those sculptures could possibly be removed from view or have a new plaque acknowledging the fact that their statements and history are no longer acceptable and that they had a good side and a bad side. That is just my personal feeling about it, and I do not think art should be destroyed. 

Shawn O'Hara: I agree with you completely about not destroying art and putting something up just to acknowledge, if that is what people’s concerns are, that we are praising and glorifying people. Then to have something to give the other side so people can become at least aware of it instead of destroying it, because a lot of effort and love and skill from the artist goes into that and the community at the time. I have also heard the line recently that a society that hates its past has no future, and that certainly connects to what you are saying. 

Simon Morris: Yes, and you cannot erase history. You just need to educate people about it properly, and that is really where the focus should be for all of us. 

Shawn O'Hara: So let us get back into the environment and the more acceptable sculptures or the other work that you are doing. You have always framed your work as pro-ocean and pro-conservation, so what do you do to make sure that the materials that you use and the installation methods, and even if you have to do ongoing maintenance, align with best practices and environmental regulations to ensure that you are not accidentally harming the ecosystem you are trying to protect? 

Simon Morris: Yes, that has always been very important to me, Shawn, and the fundamental material of all of my underwater work is called environmental bronze, and it is the same metal that is used to cast ship’s propellers. It has been shown over decades to do no harm from the bronze sculptures that have been in place underwater for many decades, and there is a sculpture in Pennekamp Park in Florida called the Christ of the Abyss that was installed there on August the 25th in 1965. It is located in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary and serves as a symbol of peace and understanding, and it is covered with life. This piece is a Christ figure in long robes with his arms outstretched to the surface, and he is looking up to welcome divers down, but it is also a religious symbol, and interestingly enough the American Association of Atheists tried for many years to have it removed because it is a religious symbol in a public park. 

Simon Morris: It got all the way to the Supreme Court over about a 10-year period, but eventually a lone and quite small piece of coral started growing on his back. Once that piece of coral grew on the bronze, the government said, “Okay, we do not care about your religious beliefs, it is part of the reef, it is staying,” and that sculpture is still there today. My own sculpture, the Emerald Princess, my first mermaid in Powell River, British Columbia, is one of the most incredible places in the world for encrusting marine life, and keeping her recognizable as a sculpture has been challenging over the years. When she has a lot of divers on her it is not much of a problem, but years and years ago the local dive shop went out of business and for a while there were very few divers on her, and I went to see her for one of her birthdays and she was absolutely covered in large white plumose anemones. If you did not know that there was a bronze sculpture under there you would have swum right by it, and she is always covered with algae and our local encrusting marine life and these anemones. 

Simon Morris: The Guardian of The Reef in Grand Cayman has the beginnings of a large barrel sponge growing out of his neck, and so they do get quite covered with life. The concrete that we use for the bases is always formulated to have a pH of between 6.5 and 7.5, and this range of pH has been termed “critter friendly” by the Reef Ball Foundation, which is one of the world’s largest builders of concrete reef structures for environmental remediation. They place these structures literally all over the world, and they have determined that this pH range actually attracts encrusting marine life, and my next sculpture in Cayman, The Angel of The Reef, will actually use what is called a layer-cake-style reef ball as part of her base. We always check the bottoms where the sculptures are going to go and we choose flat sandy bottoms where there is no life, and samples are taken and analyzed for existing life and existing pollutants to provide a baseline for ongoing impact studies. The sculptures themselves become focal points for life and become small artificial reefs in their own right, so we do everything that we can to make sure that we do no harm, and in fact the first mermaid, the Emerald Princess at Powell River, was placed so that she has absolutely zero footprint on the seabed that was not there before. 

Shawn O'Hara: Wow. So these do not get cleaned off, then once the sea life starts to grow there, or is that something that depends on the site? 

Simon Morris: That depends on who puts it there, how often it gets dived, and what people want to see. For instance, most people do not know this, but you can actually annoy a plumose anemone, and if you bother it a little bit it will simply get up and swim away and find somewhere else to live, and that is what happened when she became completely festooned with them 15 years ago or so, and it does not do any harm to the anemones. Now you can tell that she is a mermaid again, and some people like the Guardian; the people that installed The Guardian of The Reef at Divetech in Cayman have left it absolutely, I suppose the word could be “pristine,” because it has never been cleaned and it is getting so much life on it that it is hard to make out the sculptural detail. Other places you can use a scrubby or something like that to clean them up, and I am always against doing any damage to the environment or sea creatures, but algae is not an endangered species, so if it gets cleaned off once in a while it is not doing any harm to anybody. 

Shawn O'Hara: Because we clean it off everything, so that would be initially then keeping it clean without having something start there would be the intent. In the heavily dived places like Grand Cayman, is it more that the divers themselves keep the sculptures clear just by interacting with them? 

Simon Morris: Yes, and in places like Grand Cayman they are so heavily dived and people touch them all the time that it is hard for things to get much of a footing there. The mermaid in Powell River, when she did not get dived for a while, that was the most extreme case of how much life can grow on a sculpture quite quickly. Divers do absolutely touch them, and divers are 12-year-olds, and I can tell you that there was very little growth or algae on the boobs of the mermaids. 

Shawn O'Hara: Fascinating. You have dealt with everyone it sounds like, from local councillors, tourism boards, environmental agencies, port authorities, park authorities; what have you learned about navigating those relationships so that a creative conservation-focused project like yours can get a yes from everybody instead of dying in a pile of paperwork or going nowhere like the Winston Churchill statue? 

Simon Morris: Probably the most relevant scenario for this interview is that I am currently working to place the second casting of The Guardian of The Reef sculpture at the Ogden Point Breakwater in Victoria. Here in BC, and specifically in Victoria, the process is multiple steps and the very first step is talk to the First Nations first, and it is the Songhees First Nation in Victoria that is in control of the Ogden Point area. As a sign of respect to get their blessing before going any further, I have already been in touch with them, and I had the pleasure of meeting our local MP Elizabeth May at a business breakfast meeting in December and I was telling her about this. She has actually been extremely helpful in connecting me with the right people, both with First Nations and with some of the other government agencies, so once you get the blessing of First Nations, and I have already spoken to them and explained the process and the sculpture and where I want to put it, it is being placed before their elder’s council. Then I simply have to wait until the next time they meet and I hope to hear back from them in a positive manner, and if I do, the next party that I go to is ECCC, the Environment and Climate Change Canada organization, and they have to give their approval. 

Simon Morris: If it is in a park, whether it be municipal, provincial, or national, we have to get the parks board approval, and then DFO, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, plays a very large role and they ultimately also have yay-or-nay authority. We have to give them the exact GPS coordinates, ground conditions, samples of the sand for both life and existing pollutants, and just on the other side of the Ogden Point Breakwater is a Canadian Coast Guard base, so they have interest in the area and it has to go past them. You have to go through Transport Canada about the water depth because of the Hazards to Navigation Act, as you certainly do not want a freighter banging into the sculpture, and at the place where we hope to put The Guardian of The Reef at Ogden Point it is about halfway down the breakwater where it takes a fairly sharp, sort of 30-degree turn to the right. The water at the bottom there, where the large concrete blocks end and the flat sandy seabed is, is at about 70 feet, and so if the guardian on the base is 15 or 20 feet high that still leaves 50 feet of water above it, which is well above their 10-metre minimum, so we should be okay there. 

Simon Morris: Finally, the Victoria Harbour Authority is responsible for the safety of all of the infrastructure in and around the harbour, and finally it has to be posted publicly so that we can monitor public opinion and allow any residents or businesses the opportunity to object. The Ogden Point Breakwater is already the most popular recreational dive site in southern Vancouver Island, so yes, the goal is to have more diving traffic there, but it is a long way away from local homes and there is a coffee shop at the entrance to the breakwater that would become very busy with cold and thirsty divers afterwards. We are not anticipating any trouble there, and overall it is important to make them understand this process is not new; it has a successful track record and has a very positive impact on regional tourism. The number one bonus is that it also raises public awareness of the need to protect our fragile marine environment, so those are the steps, and they change depending on where you are, but not a huge amount. 

Shawn O'Hara: That is a lot to go through. So do you do that yourself, or do you have a team, or is it whoever wants it in there that leads the charge on the permitting? 

Simon Morris: Generally the way that it has worked is that individuals or corporations have come to me and said, “Hey, we would like one of your sculptures here,” and I say to them, absolutely, here is how much the sculpture will cost you, now go get the permit. I told you earlier the story about the Emerald Princess in Powell River, which was done before really there was a process in place, but both of the ones in Grand Cayman I had to get the Coastal Works application. It is complicated but straightforward, and there are some fundamental differences in the approach in different countries, but the most important factor is learn the local rules and regulations. Get to know the people involved, get them to see the upsides, and get the paperwork done the right way, because nobody wants more work than they already have. 

Simon Morris: The biggest difference between Canada and other jurisdictions is the absolute necessity to have the approval and blessing of the Indigenous people before you go any further. As far as the cost of the sculpture, as far as my price is concerned, the cost for the application is normally borne by the client, so the price of the sculpture is primarily based on the size and casting complexity of the sculpture rather than regulatory issues. I do spend a lot of time working with the clients and that is just part of it. It is part of the sales cycle for wanting to put sculptures in an unusual place, and you have to cross your t’s and dot your i’s, that is for sure. 

Shawn O'Hara: Your more recent pieces have dealt directly with climate change and Arctic habitat loss. Are there any constraints, maybe on how blunt you can be with that message when your work is supported by local groups or tourism bodies or sponsors? 

Simon Morris: Yes, there are, but I do not feel them because all of my art is focused on marine life, marine mythology, and the stories of mariners and explorers. I try to communicate my feelings about the ocean and the environment through the medium of bronze, and it is a message of love, hope, and empathy for the creatures that we share the planet with. I do not criticize any organizations or blame any one individual or nation in particular, and every one of us knows that the general activities of the human race have been detrimental to the planet and that we each need to consider our actions and our practices to reduce and remediate the damage. I have never had a negative comment about my work, and most people who know of me and my art know that I often use the sale of my work to raise funds for environmental organizations that have goals that match mine. 

Simon Morris: It is one of the reasons why I have been inducted into groups like the Artists for Conservation Foundation, the Ocean Artist Society, and also as a fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society. Yes, I have supported environmental organizations and so on, and beyond the laws and the permits I hold myself to voluntary standards in sourcing materials and working with local communities. My first rule is first do no harm; there is not a lot of point in promoting environmental art that harms the environment, and I use any local regulations as the bare minimum and make sure that the materials I use are safe and the companies that I deal with share my values. We are always very careful about where we put the pieces and that we do no harm in the actual installation either, and this does make my underwater work a bit more expensive than a piece that would be going onto land, but my clients appreciate and understand the concept. 

Shawn O'Hara: So what about safety, because people interact with these pieces and divers are going down and touching them? Are there insurance issues or even liability issues that you as an artist have to think through? 

Simon Morris: As an artist, I try and make sure that my sculptures are inherently safe, and the clients themselves are responsible for diver safety once the piece is in the water and they carry the insurance and liability issues. My contracts with the clients outline the possible pitfalls and provide specific details on the construction of the bases and the installation of the piece, and I design the bases to provide enough mass and weight and surface area to provide stability even in the most extreme conditions. During Hurricane Ivan in Grand Cayman, the waves were so huge that the troughs between the waves exposed the head of the mermaid Amphitrite in about 55 feet of water three times during that storm, and she took the full brunt of the storm and did not move an inch, so we were very lucky there. I also make sure that the sculptures have no pointed or sharp edges, because one of the fundamental reasons for putting a sculpture underwater is not just because it is for tourism and it will attract a lot of divers and generate a lot of revenue, but because it gives divers a safe focal point. 

Simon Morris: A lot of these diving resorts have quite a high percentage of customers who only dive when they are traveling, and they very often go quite long periods between dives and they need some practice for their skills. The other group are people that dive locally in cold water in drysuits with 30 pounds of lead and probably a total weight package of between 80 and 90 pounds, and then they jump in the water in Grand Cayman with four pounds of lead on a belt and no suit, so it is an entirely different environment. A lot of them use a dive on one of my sculptures, or any other underwater sculpture or attraction, to get people who are not used to diving in those conditions to do a little bit of learning about their buoyancy and everything. Sometimes they are floundering around a little bit at the beginning, so you want to make sure that you do not have a big sharp spear sticking up that they could poke themselves on, and if you look at the photograph of The Guardian of The Reef in Grand Cayman, he was originally designed to have a trident that he was holding up. 

Simon Morris: The client absolutely did not want, quote unquote, a weapon to do with the sculpture, so we replaced it with a sphere that is meant to represent the globe of the Earth, and so it is dull and I do not find it particularly attractive, but it is certainly safe. That would be very messy if people were getting injured on a sculpture and that would be bad publicity for everybody involved. You have to be careful, and you have to think through all of these scenarios before the sculpture ever goes into the water. 

Shawn O'Hara: Your work is at the crossroads of art, tourism, and environmental advocacy. How do the regulations around the claims, charitable donations, or co-marketing with dive operators and resorts shape the way that you talk about your projects in your marketing and fundraising, and have you ever had to pull back on how you tell the story? 

Simon Morris: No, actually, I guess it is part of the way that I approach the projects and I have never had to pull back on how a story is told. I have never tried to be an aggressive activist or that kind of agent of change; I have just always wanted to express my love of the ocean and work with like-minded environmental organizations for my fundraising efforts. The reason that I got into working in bronze for this is that I am extremely passionate about the ocean, everything that we have to do with it, and its inhabitants, but I am not eloquent enough to explain to people how I feel, so I have to do it through my art. When I have an unveiling and I have a room full of people with tears in their eyes, I know that I have reached out and grabbed them by the gut and I have made my point, and that is all I ever attempt to do. 

Simon Morris: In respect for the organizations that have inducted me as a member, they have their own rules and standards and I would never act outside of those guidelines. They include pretty well-known organizations like the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, the Artists for Conservation Foundation, the Ocean Artist Society, and the Ocean Futures Society. I would never do anything to upset them or cause any friction there, and I always try to promote the benefits of positive action, not criticize the negative. That is the balance that feels right to me and that seems to be welcomed by the partners I work with. 

Shawn O'Hara: Do you have advice for other, say, Canadian artists and designers who want to operate in these highly regulated environments? What are the key things you would tell them about dealing with compliance and red tape? 

Simon Morris: I would have to say that the number one thing I have learned is patience. I am not a patient person, but I have learned that you have just got to have it, and I worked on one project in Washington State for a large underwater piece for the Washington Scuba Alliance and together we spent 18 years trying to get a permit and gave up a year ago. You have to be aware that it is a lot like actors auditioning for a part, and you are not going to get them all; you have to go into each one with the same amount of enthusiasm and assume that this one will go, and you have to have that level of enthusiasm all the way until somebody with the power to say no says no, or to go ahead. It is also important to tailor your message to the local audience and be cognizant and respectful of local customs and the administrative requirements. You have to do your own research first, gathering information from reliable sources around you, because there is no point in going down a path that has a gate to it that you did not know about. 

Simon Morris: You need to build a team of local champions who are passionate about the cause and willing to do some of the legwork, because it is too much for one person to do. Look for experts in the field that may want to help and be of use, and lastly you have to go through all of these government agencies but do not expect them to drop everything and get on the bandwagon because they have got little to gain personally. Most of these projects are often a lot of extra and unusual work for them with no benefit to them, so be appreciative of that fact when making your initial inquiries. If you approach them with respect and patience, you have a much better chance of getting to yes, even if it sometimes takes years. 

Shawn O'Hara: So you have seen a lot, from permits taking two weeks to 18 years and then giving up, and everything in between. 

Simon Morris: The interesting thing about the Poseidon Memorial Reef permit in Okaloosa County in a town called Destin on the Florida Panhandle is that their city council and the county council realize how important scuba diving is to their local economy. They are huge in the fishing business, and it is an enormous charter boat center, and they actually refer to themselves as the world’s luckiest fishing village, so fishing and water sports are huge there. Diving is also very big, but most of the water surrounding the town of Destin is flat, sandy bottom, and it is not the most interesting diving in the world, even though the water is warm and clear and there are thousands of people there. They realized quite a few years ago that if they were going to be very successful they needed to make the diving more interesting, and it became a mandate to them to create what they call fish habitats and artificial reefs. 

Simon Morris: They have sunk probably a hundred ships there, and they are in the process of sinking the SS United States, which is one of the largest passenger vessels ever built, and when it sinks it will be the largest artificial reef ever sunk and it will be sunk about five miles offshore of Destin. They go all the way from little fishing boats up to the SS United States, which has received an enormous amount of publicity in Florida for this, and so they are very proactive and they understand that it is good for the environment because artificial reefs attract first encrusting life and then juvenile and prey species, but they also attract predators. If you attract the juvenile and prey species and do not give them a place to hide, you are basically setting up a lunch bar for the bigger stuff, and so with the Poseidon Memorial Reef that we are building in Destin, as we build the larger structures for the placement of cremated human remains, we are building a lot of three-dimensional rubble between the structures and around them. All of the smaller creatures have a place to hide when the barracuda and the sharks come for lunch, so it is a very conscious design. 

Shawn O'Hara: Would a land equivalent be like reforestation, going through an area that is cleared out or even reclamation from a desert where you go in, you put something, and everything else comes in as a result? 

Simon Morris: Very similar. Even coral sends out polyps into the water column and they float around for a time until they find a place to grow on, and coral likes to grow on a certain type of encrusting calcareous algae. Even though the little coral polyps do not have a brain and are blind, they know what their preference is to land on, so if this encrusting coraline or calcareous algae is present, even the coral polyps will start to land there. As this encrusting life starts to trap algae and nutrients and everything, this is where they become nurseries for the smaller creatures, so if you put anything in the ocean that is not poisonous, it will attract life. The first artificial reefs were actually built by fishermen, not divers, because they realized if you put a bunch of stuff in the ocean then fish will come to them. 

Simon Morris: Unfortunately, in the early days they used huge piles of tires, which does not have a good environmental impact, and a lot of those are being removed now. I think the whole permitting of it is a means to an end, and it is something that I have to do in order to do what I want to do. The thrill of having the opportunity to dive on one of my sculptures with people that I do and do not know is always amazing, and I love to see the look in their eyes and I feel that when we do that they have an understanding of the way that I feel. I think probably the example that sticks out in my mind more than anything is that shortly after we placed the Emerald Princess in Powell River, the British Columbia Association of Disabled Divers got together and did a fundraiser and got a permit and funding to build a wheelchair ramp down the rocky foreshore from the parking lot in Mermaid Cove Provincial Park to just below the high tide line. When it was opened, which gave disabled divers wheelchair access to get in the water, it became the first official disabled-access dive site in British Columbia. 

Simon Morris: A lot of us went up there to be part of this, and it is a very rocky foreshore, and it was very nice to have a concrete ramp to go down as an able-bodied diver, but we were pushing people in wheelchairs down to the water where they could then swim away. People are not disabled in the ocean, and it is an amazing transformation to watch, but the particular diver that I accompanied was a young woman who was blind. This was done in March, I think, of 1991, and the air temperature and the water temperature were cold, and we went down and I held her hand because obviously she could not see where she was going. When we got to the mermaid in about 60 feet of water, she took off both of her neoprene gloves, put them in the pockets of her buoyancy compensator, and then ran her hands over the mermaid from the top of her hair to the tip of her tail for about 20 minutes, and I was getting cold just watching her. 

Simon Morris: When she was finished, she put her gloves on and we turned around and surfaced, and she said to me, “She is beautiful,” and that was one of the most satisfying moments of my career. That is why I do it all, and those are the moments that stay with me far more than any awards or titles. 

Shawn O'Hara: Wow, you have contributed so much. I look at it that you have been incredibly fortunate. 

Simon Morris: I look at it that I have been incredibly fortunate to have had the right upbringing in the right place. My father was an artist, and he recognized that I am not a two-dimensional artist; I am not a painter, I have terrible colour sense, and he was a great graphic artist and an oil and watercolour painter, as is my eldest sister, but I am just no good at it. He recognized that I had a need to create art, but I was not doing it in the right mediums or the right way, and it was he that got me involved in three-dimensional welded steel sculpture, as I said, when I was about 13. How many people’s dads set them up a welding studio in the basement when they are 13? 

Simon Morris: I have just been very fortunate to have had that, and I am the result of a perfect set of circumstances, and I am very lucky. 

Shawn O'Hara: Thank you, Simon. What is the best way for people to either get a hold of you or to see your work? 

Simon Morris: The quickest and easiest way is to go to my website, which is www.sculptorsimonmorris.com. There is a contact page with the ability to email me, and they can simply go to the contact page and drop me an email. 

Shawn O'Hara: We will put that in the show notes as well. My guest today has been Simon Morris, who is a sculptor who has contributed a lot to underwater diving, to the environment, and to responsible scuba tourism and environmental awareness. Thank you so much for being here, Simon. 

Simon Morris: Thank you for having me, Shawn. 

Shawn O'Hara: And that's a wrap. 

Links

Simon Morris on LinkedIn
www.SculptorSimonMorris.com
Artists for Conservation Foundation
Royal Canadian Geographical Society
Ocean Artist Society
Ocean Futures Society