Nazareth Casillas-Reyes: Sounding the Alarm on Ocean Acidification

Meet Nazareth. Nazareth Casillas-Reyes, a student at Escuela Verde High School, loves art and the environment. She is an artist who designed and painted one of the benches at Green Tech Station.

Her design is inspired by coral reefs—a beautiful vibrant design that belies the sad reality that ocean acidification is destroying reefs around the world. The oceans naturally absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide, but over the past two hundred years human activities have added so much carbon dioxide that the water is becoming more acidic. This contributes to damaging coral reefs, which Nazareth learned are actually living structures that also provide unique habitat for fish and other creatures.

Just 17 years old, in between working three summer jobs Nazareth says she enjoyed being her ArtWorks for Milwaukee project at Green Tech Station. “It was just really relaxing to come and paint. It was really soothing. With everyone together, it made me feel really good.”

Even though reefs grow in saltwater oceans and not our freshwater Great Lakes, Nazareth appreciates the interconnectedness of all life on Earth. Nazareth hopes her bench design inspires people to think about the bigger connections between human behavior and the planet. “I just really love doing art and painting and things like that,” Nazareth says. “And also I’m really into environmentalism—just taking care of our planet, because it's the only one we have.”