California Academy of Sciences Gulf of Guinea Coloring Book

Engaging local communities on biodiversity and conservation.

California Academy of Sciences’ Gulf of Guinea Project seeks to understand and share the incredible biodiversity found on the islands of São Tomé and Prínicipe. This will help to inform conservation efforts and further our knowledge of life on this planet.

As part of this work, the group created a coloring book to distribute to local communities on the islands featuring many important native species found nowhere else in the world. Importantly, the book was also translated into Portuguese and Creole, languages that are spoken by locals but often overlooked with distributed reading materials.

I helped to illustrate a few of the key pages featuring some of these endemic species, including the amphibian Cobra Bobo (aka São Tomé Caecilian, Schistometopum thomense), Cobra Jita (aka Lined House Snake, Lamprophis lineatus bedriagae), and Búsio-D’obô (aka Giant African Land Snail, Lissachatina fulica).

A page from the coloring book showing the differences between the snake cobra jita and the caecilian cobra bobo
Black and white illustration of the main character, a girl named Jeni, coming upon a giant búsio d-obô (aka Giant African Land Snail)
Black and white illustration of a sunbird (aka selêlê) perched atop a giant begonia.

This work was done over the course of 2022 with Jim Boyer (illustrator) and CAS Senior Science Educator Roberta Ayres (writer and translator).