Many of you know Natali Bozhanova as one of the artists at The Artisan Store Fremantle. You may also know her as a TASF team member, and as the photographer behind many of our gallery images.
Some of you will know about Natali’s deep love of diving and underwater photography. Her art is full of strange, beautiful sea creatures, tiny details and a very close relationship with the ocean.
What you may not know is that when Natali disappears from the gallery for weeks at a time each November and June, she is not simply off on a holiday. She is volunteering with seagrass restoration projects here in Western Australia.
Over the past few years, Natali has spent many hours in and around the water with OzFish, helping with community driven seagrass restoration work through projects such as Seeds for Snapper in Cockburn Sound and the Monkey Mia Seagrass Restoration project in Shark Bay.
This year, all those hours of muddy boots, wet gloves, heavy bags, long days and underwater work led to something rather special. Natali was named the Western Australian winner in the 2026 OzFishers of the Year awards.
OzFish is Australia’s recreational fishing conservation charity, working with local communities to restore fish habitat across the country. In Western Australia, its seagrass restoration work is especially important. Seagrass meadows are vital underwater habitats. They provide food, shelter and nursery grounds for many marine species, including juvenile fish and invertebrates. They also help stabilise the seabed, improve water quality and store carbon.
Seeds for Snapper focuses on restoring lost seagrass habitat in Cockburn Sound. Volunteers help collect seagrass fruits and seeds, prepare restoration materials and support the work needed to give new seagrass a chance to grow where meadows have been damaged or lost.
The Monkey Mia project works a little differently, but with the same goal: helping seagrass return to areas that need it. Volunteers collect seagrass seedlings, sew hessian bags, fill them with seedlings and sand, and place them on the sea floor. The bags help hold the seedlings in place so they can attach, grow and begin rebuilding underwater habitat.
It is practical, physical, unglamorous work. It is also hopeful work. Every bag placed, every seed collected and every hour volunteered becomes part of a much larger effort to repair marine ecosystems that many of us love, depend on and too often take for granted.
For Natali, art and ocean conservation are closely connected. Her underwater photography informs her textile sculptures, and her time in the water continues to shape the creatures, textures and stories that appear in her work.
That connection also inspired her Seagrass Fruits Collection: a small range of handmade jewellery connected to local seagrass restoration work.
Each piece carries a little piece of Western Australian ocean story. It is handmade, unusual and connected to a real habitat restoration project. When you purchase from the collection, you are not only taking home a unique piece by a local artist. You are also helping support the seagrass restoration work that inspired it.
Pieces from the Seagrass Fruits Collection can be ordered through Natali’s website, with collection available from The Artisan Store Fremantle.
You can also support the projects directly by making a donation to OzFish.
We’re very lucky to have Natali as part of The Artisan Store Fremantle, both in the gallery and behind the camera. Her work is a lovely reminder that local art can carry real local stories, from handmade pieces on our shelves to the seagrass meadows being restored just off our coast.