Snorkelling and scuba diving among shipwrecks is a favourite tropical pastime, and soon, locals and tourists will enjoy a unique Cancun experience: a new underwater museum in the National Marine Park of Cancun set to open November 27.
Scuba diving enthusiast and British sculptor, Jason Taylor DeCaires had previously created a smaller exhibit in Grenada, and discovered the cement was like an artificial reef, providing surfaces for new coral growth and a habitat for fish and other sea creatures.
Officials from Cancun’s marine park contacted him about doing a project for them, and the exhibit: The Silent Evolution was born. In the largest museum of its kind, scuba-diving visitors can view some 400 ghostly life-size human sculptures, some planted with coral, 27 feet beneath the surface of the Caribbean Sea.
"I have a whole team of underwater helpers that come along and do all the finishing for me," Taylor says. "The coral applies the paint. The fish supply the atmosphere. The water provides the mood. People ask me when it’s going to be finished. This is just the beginning."
Each year, nearly 750,000 people scuba dive in the waters off Cancun, and one of the reasons for the introduction of this new museum was to divert divers from extremely fragile coral reefs in the area.