Nick Mayer: Conservation through art

In 2026, AFS began a partnership with artist Nick Mayer. Nick is a former fisheries biologist who decided to turn his love of art from a hobby into his full-time career in 2012. He grew up in Rhode Island, where he fostered a love of the outdoors catching turtles, frogs, and fish. At the age of 14, Nick caught his first Striped Bass Morone saxatilis (Image 1) on a fly he tied himself and has been a fishing addict ever since. Moreover, this love of fishing led him to study marine biology at Brown University and also did an exchange program with the Duke University Marine Lab. Nick worked seasonal research jobs for Alaska Fish & Game on Kodiak Island, Oregon Fish & Wildlife, Caribbean Conservation Corps, Costa Rica, and SeaCamp, Florida Keys. Throughout his life, Nick kept sketchbooks and continued to draw & paint fish. He sold his first painting in 1997 to the Gamefish Gallery in Key West, Florida (Image 2), and continued to paint while working as a fisheries biologist. Since becoming a full-time artist, Nick has also established the Nick Mayer Wildlife Fund with the mission, “to protect marine life and restore ocean ecosystems by combining the emotional power of art with targeted conservation efforts.” The fund aims “to spark empathy, raise awareness about threats like ocean plastic pollution and fisheries mismanagement while funding meaningful action. [The fund works] to ensure a future where AWE becomes ADVOCACY and every creature is seen, valued, and protected.” Striped Bass Morone saxatilis. Painting by Nick Mayer. Tarpon Megalops atlanticus. Painting by Nick Mayer. We sat down and talked with Nick about his passion for art, for fishing, and for conservation. How did the with AFS Partnership start? I guess where this all started was when I started working with Steve Stock, the former CEO of Guy Harvey, trying to build some strategic partnerships and start to do more along the lines of conservation. I have a background in fisheries biology and then went full-time as an artist 14 years ago and I have this collection of prints called the “Giving Back” series, where a portion of proceeds go to different nonprofits. I wanted to do something more than just that series. It’s pretty cool, because that is what Steve was all about, and we started having these conversations. That was when we decided to start working together, and we created the Nick Mayer Wildlife Fund that is all about giving back and supporting conservation efforts. We reached out to AFS and started the conversation with Jeff Kopaska [AFS Executive Director] and I think what this partnership is about is exactly that—a mutually beneficial relationship where both of us are promoting conservation and bring awareness to some of my particular projects, using my art to do that. Especially with fisheries science, it can be very data-centric, with spreadsheets and numbers and cohorts and population dynamics, etc. To have colorful pictures to go along with that I think can help out and inspire conservation. As a past AFS member, what does it mean to you to contribute to the AFS mission in this way? I was working a fieldwork position with Oregon Fish & Wildlife on a habitat restoration team—15 Mile Creek, small trib of Columbia River. Easternmost strain of steelhead that were not affected by hatchery genetics. Went to AFS Annual Meeting in Portland, Oregon, in 1993. It’s an honor. I was the guy at the bottom rung of ladder out in hip boots installing fish ladders and I got to go to this conference it was pretty cool—all these fish geeks that are excited about going to the conference—I just thought I was lucky to be able to go. Now to be working with AFS is incredibly cool for sure. AFS is a very well-respected organization. Your website has a distinct progression of your life as an artist. Did you study art at the same time that you studied science? I never really did. It’s funny. I never took a class in drawing or watercolors. I did take an oil painting class, but I haven’t really painted with oil paints outside of the class. My mom was a microbiologist and my dad was an art professor, so I was inspired by both of them. My dad would give me pointers on drawing, but I was always drawing, ever since I was a little kid. I was drawing fish in my notebooks all through school. It was something that helped me understand certain things. When I am trying to wrap my head around something or explain something to another person, I always have to draw a picture. It’s something I’ve always done, and did on the side. I never thought I could make a living off of it, so I studied fisheries science, and grew the art business on the side and eventually had to give art a shot and it actually worked out! Was there a singular event that helped you decide to switch careers from biologist to full-time artist? It was more a progression over time, like a bottle of champagne that gets shaken up until the cork blows off. I just had to eventually try it. I had a seasonal job right out of college working for Alaska Fish and Game doing research on Sockeye Salmon that was related to the Exxon-Valdez oil spill. That seasonal position ended and I got a job on a purse seiner commercial boat and I fell overboard. The captain didn’t know that I had fallen in. I swam to a different boat and barely got out before I was frozen. A couple of things like that made me realize that life is a gift and to pursue what you want to do—art in my case—is a valid thing. It wasn’t a case of all of a sudden, I said “I’m going to be an artist now!” It was something that I found a little more logical to build up and then make the transition to. What made you decide to do art for more than just to make a living? Having more of a purpose to all of it—life purpose and career purpose, so that it’s not just doing all this stuff just to make money. That would seem a little shallow—pun intended. What sort of art/subjects do you like doing most? Obviously, I’ve painted hundreds of kinds of fish! But I enjoy painting things that are oddballs, like an X-Ray Fish (Image 3) that you can see through or a Roosterfish with these crazy dorsal rays. Things like that are fun to paint. X-Ray Fish Pristella maxillaris. Painting by Nick Mayer. I’m also working on a series that is inspired by “blackwater diving.” You hang a dive light off the back of a boat way off the Continental Shelf at night and all of these planktonic organisms come up from the ocean trenches to the surface to feed. You can scuba dive with normal gear and see these creatures that you would normally need a submarine to see. I’ve been painting these paintings on black paper of larval octopi (Image 4) and larval fish. That is something that I am doing by choice, whereas it seems like most of what I end up doing is commissioned work, where someone is paying me to paint a particular fish. This blackwater series is something that I thought was really cool. Larval octopi & Ziploc bag. Painting by Nick Mayer. A lot of these larval creatures interact with plastics and there are these weird interspecies interactions where an octopus will go for a ride on a jellyfish and then, by accident, go for a ride on a plastic bag. This seemed like an interesting project that I came up with to bring awareness to an environmental cause and some fun interesting things to paint. What does your average day look like as a full-time artist with a foundation supporting science and education? Unfortunately, it’s probably not the romantic vision that people think of where I sip an espresso and look out at the horizon and dream up what I can get for inspiration. It’s probably 80% doing admin, but what I really look forward to is when I get to actually paint. It’s a juggling act, because I’m an entrepreneur running my own business and wearing lots of different hats, trying to keep everything moving forward. But I have a lot of commissions lined up, so I have to keep painting. It’s good that I have those, because I’m forced to paint. What are you working on currently? Right now I’m working on a giant Arctic Char, which is going to be a blast to paint, because they are fluorescent orange. How do you balance having all of these different initiatives and the responsibilities that come with them? That is always the challenge, but I’m very organized. I think the fact that I started as a scientist, it really helped me as an artist. In terms of the scientific eye of having to make astute observations carried over, but also, someone who analyzes data has to be organized. I have these planning sheets for my week and each day. I put a lot of thought into the structure of these and I have to be very organized about what are the priorities. There is only one me and there are only so many things I can do, so what is going to move the needle most and what do I have to do? In finding that balance, how and where do you find new inspiration for your art? This sounds kind of lame, but you do see a lot of crazy stuff on Instagram. I think that may have been where I first saw one of those blackwater creatures and it piqued my interest and I started researching. Social media is very visual. Also, fish that I go out and catch when I’m fishing. I caught this beautiful steelhead a couple of weeks ago that was purple and I said, “Oh my god, it’s literally purple!” That is a fish that I would love to paint. Possibly more importantly, how do you find time to get on the water and fish? That’s also a challenge, but it is part of how I keep my sanity. I feel like if I don’t get to paint, there is this friction that builds up over time and when I paint it is a calming experience. It is the same thing with fishing. You are just in the moment. All of these other stressful things disappear. Gotta do it, because that’s where it all came from. What is the number one issue impacting the fisheries field that your conservation fund would like to help support? I would say for saltwater fish it’s overfishing—with ocean plastics as a close second—and for freshwater fish it’s habitat loss. Another one that is personal to me is the education of people in terms of how they handle fish. You see so many people that don’t know how to handle their fish. They are “releasing” the fish, but they keep the fish out of the water so long that it doesn’t have a chance to survive. Additionally, I did a small project for Shoal Conservation, they are based in the UK, and their unique characteristic is they only work with freshwater species. They reached out for me. I painted a painting of a Sulawesi harlequin shrimp Caridina woltereckae for them (Image 5). While Darwin had the Galapagos Islands, Alfred Russel Wallace had these ponds on the Island of Sulawesi in Indonesia. There are these ponds, called “Wallace’s Dream Ponds”—similar to how the Galapagos Islands were these isolated islands where species evolved on their own—there are species all the way down to diatoms and protozoans that are unique to these little ponds. There is a shrimp that is in just one pond on one island in the whole world. It’s an illustration of how fragile some systems and species can be. Things like that just blow my mind. People there don’t even know that, and they catch them and sell them to the aquarium trade. Those are some of the projects that I think are important. Sulawesi harlequin shrimp Caridina woltereckae. Painting by Nick Mayer. You found your passion, but then you also found your passion in wanting to do something to help wildlife and fisheries. A lot of people have concerns about issues and want to help, but don’t necessarily know where to start and what to do. Do you have any advice for them? If there is something a person is passionate about and wants to help, do some research and see what organizations are out there that are helping with particular species (Image 6) or issues, learn more about them before pulling the trigger on making a donation or joining. Rio Grande Cutthroat Trout Oncorhynchus clarkii virginalis. Painting by Nick Mayer. We want to thank Nick for donating his prints so that AFS can show a token of gratitude to our donors that we have and have had for years. That allows us to show that gratitude without costing AFS any money. This will bring attention to both AFS and Nick for people who love fish and love fisheries. They can bring his artwork into their house, so they are surrounded by something they have quite a passion for. Through this partnership, AFS hopes to promote our mission to a new audience, leveraging the passion both AFS and Nick share for conservation to advance what fisheries science is to a ­nonscientific audience. To see more of Nick's work, please visit nickmayerart.com and check out his conservation work at nickmayerwildlifefund.org.