August 2012    Download the Entire Issue (PDF)

Vol. 27, No. 8   What's this?

Art as Artificial Reefs

a good idea or a distraction from the real problem?

from the August, 2012 issue of Undercurrent  

Subscriber Content Preview
Only active subscribers can view the whole article

Last September, the Grenada Board of Tourism issued a press release, announcing an "exciting new addition" to its list of tourist attractions. It was a bench. Yes, you read right -- a bench.

It's the latest addition to Grenada's Underwater Sculpture Park, the first of its kind, in Molinere Bay. The bench is 15 feet underwater, near the "Vicissitudes" sculpture, a ring of stone children. The press release calls the bench, "its latest installation, more than a little 'tongue in cheek' in spirit ... The piece presents an opportunity to take a seat and some time out, breathe a few bubbles and reflect on the art installation."

Is this what diving has come to? Touting benches as the latest exciting additions to the underwater environment? Well, yes. Artificial reefs are common worldwide, purposefully sunken structures made out of everything from subway cars to warships, and they're touted as exciting new sites for divers to explore and fish to thrive in. Now trending upward is "underwater art," which started with the statue Christ of the Abyss being sunk near Key Largo, FL, in 1965, and continues today with hundreds of statues in "underwater museums" in the Caribbean. There's even a group of Los Angeles moviemakers working with beach resorts to build underwater "Fantasyland" structures.

The newest man-made reef is the U.S.S. Mohawk, a WWII-era Coast Guard cutter sunk on July 2 near Fort Myers Beach, FL. Apparently, it's the first artificial reef to memorialize veterans. But let's be frank. The Mohawk was sunk to be a moneymaker first, a memorial second. Sunken wrecks that draw divers create millions of dollars for the tourism industry. Seeing the effect on its bottom line, the dive industry is taking matters into its own hands and promoting the sunk ships and underwater sculptures as the hottest, newest trips on the itinerary. Phil Saye, who runs Dive Grenada and Grenada's Ultimate Dive Resort, came up with the idea for the underwater bench, saying, "I wanted to create something that would be unusual and capture the imagination of underwater photographers, but also fit with the concept of the Underwater Sculpture Park. The images taken on the bench will be fantastic marketing for Grenada as a whole."...