Colombian underwater ‘art gallery’ serves as coral home

Isla Fuerte: At the bottom of the Caribbean Sea, an unusual gallery of sculptures and an unusual destination to provide home to a reef threatened by tourism and climate change.
Created by sculptors Hugo Osorio and Pedro Fuentes, 25 so far form an artificial reef in the blue waters surrounding the paradisiacal Isla Fuerte on the Colombian coast.
They are 1.5 meters (about five feet) high and spread around the seabed at a depth of about six meters, attracting visitors – mainly fish, but also divers.
The sculptures have been installed since 2018 by MUSZIF, an initiative started by fashion designer and island resident Tatiana Orrego.
The plan is to reach 25 more.
“When I saw the destruction of the island’s natural reef, I saw the possibility of an art project to protect and improve coral life,” Orrego told AFP.
Orrego decorated the clay figurines with baby beads and watched them go.
According to the founder of Colombia’s first underwater art gallery, the sculptures are an “ideal substrate” for the growth of marine invertebrates.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), since the beginning of the year, the world has witnessed episodes of coral bleaching in the northern and southern hemispheres. ).
These events lead to the death of reefs, affecting the ecosystems that depend on them, tourism and food security.
The culprit, according to NOAA: ocean warming.
Colombia’s coral reefs have spread over an area the size of 100,000 football fields, but two-thirds have suffered bleaching, according to the environment ministry.
Other problems include direct damage to reefs by divers and tourists.
Tourists have been known to break pieces of coral to bring them to the surface, while others have been known to damage them by walking on structures.
“People don’t understand that corals are living things,” Orrego said.
The Isla Fuerte Gallery receives around 2,000 visitors a year.
Orrego offers an “alternative place to host tourists without overburdening the natural reef”.
Osorio and Fuentes, who created the living coral sculptures in the Orrego commission, based their designs on the creations of the Zenu ancestors, who lived in the Colombian Caribbean before the arrival of the Spanish.