Europe’s first underwater museum opens in Lanzarote

Europe’s first underwater museum opens in Lanzarote

The first and only underwater sculpture museum of Europe, Museo Atlantico, has been inaugurated on January 10, 2017 off the Canary Island coast of Lanzarote. The museum has been created at a depth of between 12 and 15 meters on the ocean floor and will be accessible to scuba divers and visible to glass-

bottom boats. It features over 300 life-sized sculptures and has 12 sprawling underwater installations by artist Jason deCaires Taylor who took almost three years to complete the project. The sculptures are created with pH neutral materials and have been designed to last for hundreds of years as an artificial reef for marine life to thrive on. They have also been created to raise awareness of the need for environmental conservation and to highlight marine ecology issues. British sculptor deCaires Taylor had installed its first similar underwater sculpture park in Grenada, the West Indies which was named as one of the Top 25 Wonders of the World in National Geographic magazine.