There is a huge treasure, on the seabed of the Costa Maya, available to those who want to enjoy it in the face of a minimum of effort.

It is not a question of the treasure hidden by some buccaneer who, centuries ago, infested the Yucatan peninsula, in Mexico, to plunder the galleons that were returning full of gold to the motherland. They are sculptures. Hundreds of sculptures, scattered under the surface of the water to create an original and precious underwater museum to visit after having equipped yourself with fins, mask, and tanks.

Immersed in the silent depths of the sea, illuminated by the sun’s rays that at those latitudes can pierce without weakening meters and meters of saltwater, the statues created by the British sculptor Jason de Caires Taylor have over the years become one of the most spectacular attractions of that stretch of in itself it costs sufficiently frequented.

It is called Musa, or Museo Subacuatico de Arte, and is entirely distributed on the seabed off the coast of Cancun.

A provocation from an artist first of all, since his works can be enjoyed only and exclusively by those who are able to tackle scuba diving. But not only that: the author, a convinced environmentalist, thought that his statues could be filled over the years with those algae and corals that are slowly disappearing from the nearby reef due to the massive anthropization of the sea.

By shifting the interest of divers elsewhere, the hope is that marine microorganism can find the necessary resources to regenerate. The underwater statues, in fact, can be sufficient reason of interest whether they are covered with corals or if they remain more or less visible to the eyes of those who look at them from behind the glass of a mask.

De Caires Taylor was certainly not spared: the statues positioned over the time on the backdrop are today 485, all life-size human figures, to which are added another thirty placed on the ground as an introduction to the heart of the exhibition. 150 square meters of the colonized seabed, a decidedly large surface if you have to explore it with scuba tanks and fins.

The idea is neither new nor original: underwater statues have been placed in Grenada, Canada on Salt Spring Island, Italy in Portofino, but none of these locations has a so wide extension. On the other hand, it could not be done otherwise, since it had become necessary to invent something really effective to divert the attention of tourists from the coral reef, put to the test first by storms, then by a hurricane, finally by divers hunting for some selfie on the colored seabed: it is estimated that the snorkelers who wander around the four hectares of the Cancun reef are about half a million a year, most of which are concentrated in restricted periods during which presences multiply, putting the resilience of an ecosystem that is by its very nature rather delicate is a severe test.

If the underwater plastic museum manages to divert the attention of even a modest percentage of those who dive in those parts, it will in itself be a huge success: if art also helps to safeguard nature, the future can only emerge. rosier.