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Mexico Opening Underwater Museum To Protect Coral Reefs

Where: Mexico
October 6, 2009 at 5:58 PM | by Omri | 0 Comments

The Mexican government has a creative new idea for getting tourists to stop overwhelming and destroying the coral reefs around Cancun: distract them with something shiny. So they're building the world's largest underwater museum and filling it with art work, hoping that the new attraction will take some pressure off the regional ecosystem.

There's little environmental risk to the area as the concrete will be PH-neutral. Exactly the opposite in fact: the new rocks will allow algae and small invertebrates to flourish, adding rather than subtracting from the local ecosystem. The construction of the museum itself will probably take a bite out of the local environment, but we assume it'll be done in a minimalist way. Can you imagine the headache if it came out that their Green Tourism museum was, well, not?

Here's the details on the project, including the location of it:

The Sculpture Underwater Museum will be located at the Parque Nacional Costa Occidental, which is located around Mujeres Island, Punta Cancun and Punta Nizuc. This area receives around 290 thousand tourists a year, which bring lots of economic wealth but add a lot of pressure to the region's natural resources... He said to Tierramerica: "With this museum we will warrantee a better distribution of the tourists and we will give the reefs some rest.

The first four sculptures will be submerged next month and the government eventually expects to place as many as 400 works for viewing. The project will be supervised by Jason de Caires Taylor, who is famous for his underwater art work, which we didn't really know was a Thing. You can view his other works on his webpage, including some mind-blowing pictures of underwater sculptures in the West Indies.

[Photo: Jason de Caires Taylor]

Related Stories:
· Underwater Museum to Protect Coral Reefs in Mexico [Treehugger]
· Mexico Travel Coverage [Jaunted]
· Museums Travel Coverage [Jaunted]

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