Richard Ellis, a polymath of marine existence whose artwork, books and museum installations — particularly the life-size blue whale on the American Museum of Herbal Historical past in Fresh York — open the sweetness and wonders of the sea, died on Would possibly 21 in Norwood, N.J. He was once 86.
His daughter, Elizabeth Ellis, mentioned the reason for his loss of life, at an assisted dwelling facility, was once cardiac arrest.
Mr. Ellis had refuse formal coaching in marine biology, conservation, portray or writing. However in fusing his creative aptitude with an encyclopedic wisdom of ocean creatures, he was a useful, sui generis determine to conservationists, educators and the ones inquisitive about sea existence.
“Richard was an enthusiast, and he absolutely adored the natural world, especially the sea,” mentioned Ellen V. Futter, the previous president of the herbal historical past museum, the place Mr. Ellis was once a analysis worker for a few years. “He wanted everybody to share his appreciation and joy from the beauty of it, but also to feel the same sense of responsibility to protect it.”
Mr. Ellis spent a lot of his existence touring to unique locales, the place he bobbed round on boats and went diving searching for vast squid, superb white sharks and alternative fantastical, elusive deep-sea creatures.
“If people understood the life, the importance, the habits of these creatures — whether sharks or whales or manatees — they would acquire a reverence,” Mr. Ellis instructed The Fresh York Instances in 2012. “I do it so people will say, ‘Wow, I didn’t know that’ or ‘Isn’t that cool! Look at what octopuses can do!’”
His photorealistic artwork of whales had been offered in an artwork gallery and printed in Audubon and Nationwide Flora and fauna magazines and within the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His greater than a lot books about marine existence — particularly his tomes on whales, sharks and tuna — made him, within the view of the best-selling creator Simon Winchester, the “poet laureate of the marine world.”
During his existence, Mr. Ellis was once by no means a long way from a big frame of aqua. Rising up at the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens, he swam just about each and every generation within the Atlantic Ocean, climate allowing. The blue aqua, and what lurked under, steadily washed up in his daydreams.
“I would be sitting in class, learning about the Revolutionary War — except I was drawing swordfish,” he instructed a weekly newspaper on Lengthy Island in 2015. “I didn’t think this was going to mark the beginning of my career, but it did.”
In 1969, the American Museum of Herbal Historical past rented Mr. Ellis as an exhibition fashion designer and assigned him to aid form a life-size blue whale to hold from the ceiling within the Corridor of Ocean Moment.
“I thought, ‘OK, how hard can it be?’” Mr. Ellis instructed The Instances. “There must be all kinds of pictures.”
There weren’t. Mr. Ellis needed to depend on drawings and pictures of useless animals, an enjoy that satisfied him that the one strategy to appropriately depict oceanic wonders was once to swim between them — even though they harbored a want to devour him.
Within the Eighties, dressed in scuba tools and secure by way of a metal cage, he was once one of the vital first ocean explorers to swim with superb white sharks. He instructed The Instances that he recalled “breathing extraordinarily fast because I’m sure the sharks are going to break through the cage and kill me.”
Upcoming that worry subsided, Mr. Ellis was full of surprise.
“You don’t belong here, but it does,” he mentioned. “And then you understand how beautiful it really is, and you spend the rest of your time staring at this animal or photographing it and thinking to yourself, ‘I am very privileged to be able to see this creature in its natural habitat.’”
Richard Ellis was once born on April 2, 1938, within the Belle Harbor group of Queens. His father, Robert, was once a legal professional and likewise labored on the United Transformer Company. His mom, Sylvia (Levy) Ellis, was once additionally a legal professional however didn’t apply.
He spent maximum of his adolescence swimming within the ocean.
“I had always been fascinated by the ocean and what lived in it,” he instructed The Instances. “But most of the time, what lived in it was me.”
Upcoming graduating from the College of Pennsylvania in 1959 with some extent in American civilization, he joined the Military. He was once stationed in Honolulu and, in his off hours, surfed and swam within the Pacific Ocean.
Mr. Ellis maintained an association with the American Museum of Herbal Historical past for a lot of his existence, however he made his dwelling portray, writing and illustrating books. His output was once prodigious.
“The Book of Whales” (1980) tells the complicated historical past of just about each and every species of whale, accompanied by way of his illustrations.
In “Monsters of the Sea” (1994), the creator and naturalist Janet Lembke wrote in a evaluation in The Instances, Mr. Ellis aimed his “insatiable curiosity” at “legend-hallowed behemoths: the leviathan, the polyp, the man-eating elasmobranch (otherwise known as the shark), all manner of sea serpents (including Nessie, the Loch Ness monster) and some great, stranded lumps of flesh called ‘blobs’ and ‘globsters’ for want of more precise names.”
“Tuna: A Love Story” (2008) tells the tale of the way a fish in a position to swimming 55 miles according to life was an overfished commodity.
“To biologists,” Mr. Ellis wrote, “the tuna is the epitome of hydrodynamic excellence; it is fast, powerful, streamlined, and equipped with specializations that enable it to perform its duties better than any other fish in the ocean.”
To people, it’s tuna salad and sushi.
“What I do is I paint the things I admire,” Mr. Ellis mentioned at the NPR program “Talk of the Nation” in 2008. “Other people shoot them, some people fish for them. I paint them.”
Mr. Ellis married Anna Kneeland in 1963. They divorced in 1981.
Along with his daughter, he’s survived by way of Stephanie W. Visitor, his better half since 1989; a son, Timo; Ms. Visitor’s kids, Victoria, Vanessa, Fred and Andrew Visitor; six grandchildren; and his brother, David. He lived at the West Aspect of New york for a few years.
Mr. Ellis gave the impression at the CNN program “Larry King Live” in 2001 nearest a shark bit an 8-year-old boy in Pensacola Seaside, Fla.
“They are dangerous when hungry, right?” Mr. King requested him.
No longer precisely.
“They’ve been around for roughly 300 million years,” Mr. Ellis mentioned. “And if something moved in the water, it was edible to a shark.”
It’s no longer the fault of sharks that society began swimming of their aqua.
“If it moves in the water and you’re a shark,” Mr. Ellis mentioned, “you can eat it.”
