In the past 30 years, the Florida Keys have lost 80 percent of their coral. That is a devastating loss to both an area that attracts tourists based upon the vibrancy of its waters and the ecosystem around it.
For some the Keys are a mecca for boating, fishing, and scuba diving. To others the Keys are a perfect place to relax and unwind near the water. For St. Louis glasswork artist Ethan Crawford, the Keys have been a source of inspiration and an environmental calling. Crawford, 25, uses his artistic skills to coax glass into the twisting, spindly organic shapes that coral likes to form. The art practice is a culmination of a lifetime of interest in the natural world.
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The artist spent most of his childhood in Kentucky, where he fell in love with all things coral. Over 250 million years ago, Kentucky was covered by a shallow tropical sea not unlike the environment of the Florida Keys today. “Growing up, I’ve always been fascinated by how living things grow,” he says.“I found fossils of coral while playing in the creek in our backyard. The thought that my house was once a coral reef was cool to me. “
Crawford went scuba diving for the first time in 2016, encouraged by his brother and mother, who were both certified divers. He first dove in the coral reefs off of Cozumel, Mexico, where he saw an underwater world brimming with life and vivid colors. A year later, Crawford went back to the same dive sites, and all the beauty he saw was gone.
“The coral was bleached out, the color was gone, and most of the fish, eels, and sea life I’d seen before left to feed elsewhere,” says Crawford. “Heartbroken, I started researching if there was anything I could do to help.”
Bleaching coral is not just a Mexican problem, it is a worldwide phenomenon. According to Frank Slifka, a director of coral programs at Captain Hook’s Dive Center in Big Pine Key, Florida, there was only one recorded bleaching in the Keys between 1960 and 2005. By 2017, there had been another three. Among the hardest hit species in the Keys have been branching and staghorn corals, two of Crawford’s favorites to sculpt in his St. Louis studio.
There are many factors at work which cause worldwide coral bleaching. Pollution, climate change, and over-fishing are often cited as culprits. Rising water temperatures have pushed the waters around the Keys to 85 degrees in the summer, prompting algae growth that kills coral. Says Slifka, “Everything we do as humans has its impact on our environment. Everything is interconnected.”
Slifka bemoans the challenge of reaching people who don’t personally encounter the reefs and making their importance clear, a difficulty which Crawford personally understands. “As a kid growing up in Kentucky, we are all told that the reef is dying, but it’s difficult to relate because not many people there are exposed to sea life firsthand,” he says. “We struggle to connect what’s happening to our coral reefs with the destruction of our own food supply, the increased damage during natural disasters, and growing risks to the health of plants, animals, and humans. Witnessing the coral bleaching firsthand in 2017 changed my life forever.”
Since that life-changing experience, Crawford has volunteered his time and a portion of his profits from sales towards coral restoration efforts. Though he’s based 1,500 miles away from the Florida Keys, he’s making connections to the islands’ reefs all over the world.
A job as a glassblowing instructor at Third Degree Glass Factory—where he also sells his work—brought Crawford to St. Louis. When the pandemic hit, his in-person teaching opportunities slowed down, and he had to figure out how to make a living blowing glass without an income from teaching. He started making TikTok videos sharing the science behind glass and livestreaming the process of making his glass art.
“I was able to gain a following of over 365,000 followers and sell what I make, sometimes while I’m making it, all live on TikTok. This has been helping me reach people I never would have been able to and start the conversation about why I make my coral sculptures.” Crawford has followers as far away as Australia and Singapore and has sold art to buyers in the United Kingdom and Malaysia, among other locales.
One of Crawford’s early customers was Jim Peppler, an engineer and avid scuba diver living in St. Louis. He purchased three of Crawford’s early works and became so interested in the art that he now works with Crawford as a part-time assistant. “Ethan’s glass coral sculptures caught my eye from the first moment they appeared in Third Degree Glass Factory’s gallery,” says Peppler. “They were like nothing I’d ever seen before…After learning more from his website about what inspires him, I knew I needed to have at least one of his creations. I have a staghorn coral with a seahorse on my mantle, and two smaller corals for my home and office desks. They remind me of the fascinating and beautiful other world beneath the waves I only rarely get to visit. They also remind me to cherish and actively work to preserve this fragile organism which supports so much of our planet’s ecosystem.”
In addition to donating a portion of his profits from sales to coral restoration, Crawford is one of many scuba divers donating their time to the coral reefs through coral farming. The Keys alone have three organizations working towards recruiting volunteers and getting them to the reefs for restoration work. Crawford chose the Coral Restoration Foundation in Key Largo.
Volunteer scuba divers receive an introductory class teaching them how the coral farms work and the techniques used to fight the growth of algae and fire coral–a competing species detrimental to coral farms—on the “pop-up” coral trees. Divers also get the opportunity to participate in the eventual planting of the young coral on the ocean floor.
Crawford’s initial reaction to viewing the coral farms for the first time was one of joy and hope. “I felt so excited to see hundreds of super healthy corals,” he says. “Every piece of coral had polyps out, and I couldn’t help but think about how happy they looked. Then seeing them transplanted was a huge eye-opener. Hopefully, coral will be here longer than we will. It’s amazing to see the growth of the colonies, especially once they start merging. It gives me hope that our efforts can create positive change.”
According to Slifka, the results of the plantings provide very quick results. “We plant ‘reef-building’ corals, which are boulder, star, and brain corals. In the wild it would take 50 to 70 years to do what our nursery can do in six to seven months.”
When he’s not diving, Crawford is still surrounded by his own sort of reef, shaping glass staghorn coral pieces in his sweltering studio. Living in St. Louis has put a few limitations on his ability to find inspiration from the sea. His only underwater experiences on a day-to-day basis are the St. Louis Aquarium, pet stores, and the memories he has made while scuba diving. “I tend to get most of my fix from watching videos I took on my GoPro while diving or finding videos on YouTube,” he says.
But between his trips back to the reefs, Crawford does his part by inspiring hundreds of thousands of people with his coral art and livestream videos. “I will continue to do whatever it takes to educate people about how critical reef health is to the well-being of all living things,” he says.
Find Ethan Crawford glasswork at Third Degree Glass Factory, 5200 Delmar. Find him on TikTok at @ethan_glassworks.
