Oʻahu-based creative Shera Mercer ditched a corporate lifestyle to return home and do what she loves: Dive. Snap. Make. Repeat.
She first learned to silversmith as a senior at Punahou School, “I waited years, and it was exactly what I thought. I loved it!” she told Aloha State Daily. “I like making stuff with my hands and it was fun to work with different materials and learn a different process than other things that I had done. I would spend hours in the studio.”
Around that time, Mercer also got into photography, a skill passed down from her grandfather and both her parents, who fell in love while attending the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, she said. After high school, she pursued higher education in Boston and then the United Kingdom, where she met her husband, Joe, and spent 15 years working as a business consultant.
“When I moved back to Hawaiʻi, I thought, ʻI can't be an international business consultant here.’” she told Aloha State Daily. “So, as a diver, I knew I wanted to do something that involved the ocean and find a way to give back to it, since the ocean was a really big part of me being able to survive the level of toxicity in any corporate environment. I would go on dive trips a few times a year all over the world; fly to the Red Sea, decompress, come back, and I'd be fine. I needed the ocean to cope.”
Her favorite part about diving is “the freedom and the openness,” she said, adding, “It puts everything in perspective for you. You look at marine mammals and the communities they live in. They’re getting along. … We need to take time to learn about animal behavior, especially with sharks before we kill them off. That affects all of us. [Sharks] take care of the reef, and the reef sustains our Islands. Everything is connected.”
Inspired by her own underwater experiences and calling to ocean conservation, in 2015, she started ʻAlohi Kai, an eco-friendly jewelry business, featuring hand sculpted sharks, turtles, Hawaiian monk seals and more, made from fine and sterling silver, and Argentium, all sourced from the U.S.
“There's nothing easy about starting a small business. … Everything was new. There was a lot of learning about people and product inventory, things like that,” she reflected. “When I started, I hadn’t fully crystalized how everything connected between the ocean and photography and jewelry. But now, it’s a lot clearer for me to see how it ties together.”
Photograph of a shark. (Shera Mercer) 
Photograph of a playful seal and turtle. (Shera Mercer) 
Photograph of a turtle caught in a hook. (Shera Mercer)
Her eye for design is illuminated underwater, where Mercer captures marine life from several different angles. She sketches, prints and hand carves with wax in a small home studio before fabricating and polishing. The process for each piece of jewelry is “labor intensive,” she said, adding that it can take weeks to finish, so preparing for a show or pop-up market like Made in Hawai’i Festival can take three to four months.
But slow methods with a purpose contribute to ‘Alohi Kai’s sustainability efforts, which involve using reclaimed metals and plastic-free packaging, for example.
“[With] slow fashion, not only is it about doing things intentionally and by hand, but … [it] is about cutting back on waste. Might be odd for a jewelry maker to say that, but I like the idea of only buying what you love,” Mercer said. “Skipping fast fashion items that only last a season and investing in things you can pass on to others. It’s a sign of knowing who you are, what you like and what you represent.
“I have a lot of customers who save up to buy a shark or whale because it is so much a part of their identity – they have to have it. And you might be surprised how many people tell me how long they’ve been saving to get a piece – and when they are able, they purchase it. I know it will be cherished and have meaning to them and they now have a great story to tell, and in the process, it raises awareness about the shark or coral or turtle they bought. If only we could do that with more things, we might not have such a waste problem in landfills."
Mercer has worked with conservation groups in the past, she says, but more regularly helps clean up trash, weights and fishing lines on dives. For example, after picking up hundreds of pounds of lead from a reef, she repurposed it into dive weights shaped like a manta rays, whale sharks and sharks. “This is all part of slow fashion – reusing it into something that is usable and has a longer life.”
Over the last decade, Mercer has enjoyed engaging with her customers – both locals and visitors alike – who range from fellow shark fanatics and divers to marine biologists and even Mainland divers who are landlocked, she noted. Next year, she aims to start working with steel to offer a more affordable option.
Her advice to other artists is: “It’s hard, but if you have something to work towards, keep at it.”
Need holiday gift ideas? Check out ‘Alohi Kai’s Holiday Guide.
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Kelsey Kukaua Medeiros can be reached at kelsey@alohastatedaily.com.
