MAF world

The MAF World network is a COST Action bringing together researchers, policymakers, and civil society to build an integrative vision for the study, conservation and restoration of Marine Animal Forests, one of the ocean’s most complex and least understood ecosystems.

Marine Animal Forests are not forests in the traditional sense. They are underwater canopies of sponges, gorgonians, hard corals, bryozoans and bivalves that span coastal and open ocean waters across the globe. Like their terrestrial counterparts, they are biodiversity hotspots, carbon sinks and essential providers of ecosystem services for hundreds of millions of people. And like their terrestrial counterparts, they are under threat.

MAF World approached us to create a video that could communicate the scope of the network and the urgency of its mission to audiences beyond the scientific community.

Our challenge was to take a subject of immense visual richness and scientific complexity and give it a visual language that felt alive, coherent and accessible. Working from real images and footage provided by the client, our design team built a graphical world that bridges scientific accuracy with visual storytelling, one where original illustration breathes life into the ecosystems and the network’s goals become tangible, not just technical.

The result is an animated video that positions Marine Animal Forests not as a niche research subject, but as a living, essential part of our ocean, and MAF World as the network working to ensure they are understood, protected and restored.