As a scientific illustrator, Paul Vecsei is not alone. Documenting the characteristics of flora and fauna is a centuries-old tradition (think Charles Darwin or even Leonardo da Vinci). But in the digital age, it might be a bit less common to see an artist labouring for hours over a photograph or drawing of a single creature. Vecsei is a biologist and illustrator devoted to his craft, spending his time under the water photographing fish with his precise eye and his time on land meticulously rendering them in the studio.

But Vecsei is not trying to make an ecological point — he's actually maintaining a scientific distance from his subjects. The illustrator says, "My interests are to describe diversity in our fish fauna...I'm merely a transfer of information, one stage of what's out there."

In this video, you'll meet the scholar of fish and find out why he insists he's not an artist — and why we kind of think he is anyway.