Art + Corals + Conservation = Awesome

James deCaires Taylor's <a href="http://www.underwatersculpture.com/index.asp">website</a>

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

This is one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a long time. I don’t particularly enjoy snorkeling (too claustrophobic) but I’d try it again just to see this amazing underwater installation. Artist Jason deCaires Taylor is a former scuba instructor who’s found a novel way to reduce tourists’ footprints on Caribbean coral reefs: create a new reef. Using marine-grade cement designed to foster coral growth, deCaires Taylor sculpted more than 400 life-size human figures and submerged them 30 feet underwater. The sculpture installation—strategically located near the popular resort city of Cancún, Mexico—has already been colonized by corals and more than 1000 different types of fish plus lobsters and other creatures. As an added benefit, tourists who opt to go see deCaires Taylor’s growing reef take some of the ecological burden off of the older, more delicate reefs nearby.

 

Wildlife get a bonus too: new reefs mean that fish have a new home, and smaller animals can dart down to the sculpture’s feet when they see a predator swimming above. Eventually, according to National Geographic, the sculptures would cover around 4,250 square feet, making it one of the largest underwater art installations in the world.

DeCaires Taylor’s project definitely has an ecological impact, and an aesthetic one as well. The figures look extremely eerie in the fluctuating light, despite being only 30 feet below the sunny surface of the ocean. The faces growing algae evoke victims of shipwrecks, and like human bodies, their decomposition feeds other creatures. There’s something intriguing about the continually changing and developing nature of this art: it’s definitely “alive” in the most literal sense, but it’s also an artificial, human-made structure that’s been plunked down in the ocean. It may not be for every art-lover, but the fish sure seem to love it. More cool images from the exhibition in the video below.

Jason DeCaires Taylor Underwater Sculpture from Christian Sandino-Taylor on Vimeo.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate