The World's Largest Underwater Museum Opening In Mexico

This winter, tourists to the beautiful Yucatan Peninsula off the coast of Cancun, Mexico will have one more thing to look forward to - an amazing underwater museum featuring 400 sculptures, inspired from both contemporary and Mayan influences.

Scheduled to open in November, the Subaquatic Sculpture Museum will be the world's largest underwater museum. It has been commissioned by Mexico's West Coast National Park, who hopes to divert visitor attention away from the area's coral reefs, which have been severely damaged thanks to the almost 300,000 tourists that visit the area, each year.

Park officials are hoping that visitors will now choose to snorkel to the museum, giving the coral a chance to recover and become stronger.

Jason de Caires Taylor, who created the first underwater museum off the island of Grenada , is the vision behind this one too. As with all of Jason's musuems, this one will be extremely eco-friendly - The sculptures will be propagated with 'live' coral to create artificial coral reef, while the surrounding water will be maintained with the perfect chemical composition to allow algae and small creatures to thrive. To view additional pictures of Jason's previous underwater projects check out his site at www.underwatersculpture.com.

sources:treehugger.com, news.com.au