Ghostly Underwater Museum Aims to Divert Tourists from Endangered Reef

Colorful sponges and other marine life are starting to colonize the museum?s statuary and draw tourists away from a threatened natural reef off the Cancun coast

By Erik Vance

Image: Jason deCaires Taylor

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CANCUN, Mexico?Taking a boat out from Cancun is like visiting an aquatic Disneyland for adults. Along a 25-kilometer coastal mainland stretch of luxury hotels, there?s parasailing, jet skiing and a ?pirate boat? where tourists eat surf and turf while watching a Captain Jack Sparrow type perform on stage. Eight kilometers offshore, near Isla Mujeres, divers and snorkelers flood the reef?often with the unfortunate consequence of breaking pieces of coral, bleeding sunscreen toxic to wildlife and otherwise stressing a delicate ecosystem.

Five years ago, desperate to give relief to one of the most heavily used coral reefs on the continent, a group of conservationists and artists teamed up to create an alternative to draw the tourists away. Today the underwater museum they created at a sandy shore just short of the Manchones Reef, off Isla Mujeres, showcases a collection of 200 beautiful humanlike statues. It has become an important attraction and is successfully transforming into habitat for local marine life.

The idea for an underwater sculpture garden came to Jaime Gonzalez, director of the Isla Mujeres National Park in Cancun, in 2005 after he saw how 87,000 tourists every year were literally loving the reefs to death. That year he had tried dropping ?reef balls??spherical artificial reefs?which people could perhaps visit instead.

The tour operators were not impressed, recalls Roberto Diaz, then-president of the Cancun Nautical Association that represents divers in the area, and they told Gonzalez so. ?He didn?t like my comments,? Diaz says. ?We have to bring tourists here. There was nothing to see. There were no fish. Just big balls that are empty?just horrible.?

Gonzalez, frustrated and disappointed, considered banning divers from the reef, but Diaz says it would have meant years in court. So rather than escalating an already tense situation, Gonzalez sought an alternative. He found Jason Taylor, a British underwater sculptor who had built a few underwater sculptures in Grenada. ?A lot of research has been done about artificial reefs, and they require a lot of resources and a lot of research and a lot of maintenance,? Taylor says. Scientists have sunk cinderblocks, old tires, ships and even train cars. But most are an eyesore before algae, then corals and sponges can populate them successionally.

Taylor?s sculptures near Manchones Reef, however, were a hit. Their ghostly shapes perfectly complemented the silent blue sea. Diaz immediately began raising funds. (So far it costs $12,000 to create and install each statue.) Ironically, they were soon so popular that tour operators complained when algae moved in.

Again Gonzalez compromised. He cleaned half of the statues, using his bare hands and steel wool, and let the rest continue on their way. As he cleaned, fish would hover behind his shoulder, waiting for him to expose urchins snacking on the algae that they would then eat. Without urchins to eat it, the algae just came back. But on the rest, their urchins intact, another layer of calcium-laying organisms grew underneath the algae and now represent beautiful maturing mini reefs. In some cases sponges moved in on specific spots, such as a statue?s lips, giving the impression of lipstick. ?What I never expected were the sponges,? Taylor says. ?Because the sculptures are placed in an open area where there?s lots of current, the sponges are able to filter nutrients from the water. So you are seeing these amazing bright yellow, pink, red, blue?all these different types of amazing sponges.?

The installation has also attracted other scientists and artists. Five Mexican sculptors now contribute to the growing installation, and a U.S. artist is designing an iron sculpture that will, with the help of an electric current, grow a calcium ?biorock? shell around it. Another sculpture of a body covered in ears houses electronic equipment that is part of a nascent network?by Heather Spence, a marine biologist with Michelle?s Earth Foundation?devised to record underwater background noise. Spence is part of a growing community who think that sound could be used to estimate the population dynamics of marine life. ?We?re actually documenting the formation of a reef by listening to that process. And that?s something that hasn?t been done before,? she says.

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/~r/sciam/biology/~3/bftqWyIQf-w/article.cfm

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