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The British eco-sculptor Jason deCaires Taylor has submerged 240 new sculptures to extend the Lanzarote’s Museo Atlántico, the first underwater art centre in Europe. The museum already contains a total of 300 works of art and at the end of this month will be celebrating its first anniversary. This project, supported by Promotur Turismo de Canarias, “is a gateway into another world and promotes better understanding of the invaluable marine environment and our utmost dependence on it,” says the artist.

During the inauguration of the new works of art, the regional minister for tourism of the Canary Islands government, María Teresa Lorenzo, acknowledged that “Lanzarote’s Atlantic Museum has become the tourism attraction with the greatest and most long-lasting international impact ever promoted by the Canary Islands government.”

This monumental project took over two years to create and aims to create a strong visual dialogue between art and nature. Designed with a conservationist approach to create a large-scale artificial reef, the first pieces, installed at the end of January 2016, have already been visited by angel sharks, shoals of barracudas and sardines, octopuses, sea sponges and the occasional butterfly ray.

Lanzarote’s Atlantic Museum is located on the sea bed of Las Coloradas Bay, at 14 metres depth and occupies a 50-square-metre area. It also promotes the water sports sector through scuba-diving and snorkelling, water sports being one of the main attractions of the islands aside from the sun and beaches.

The new installations include a 100-tonne wall that is 30 metres long; the sculpture of a botanical garden that includes representations of local flora and fauna and a composition of 200 life-size human figures which form a human whirlpool. All of the pieces have been made out of materials that are pH neutral and respect the environment, and have all been designed to adapt to the native marine life.

The project has been promoted by the Art, Culture and Tourism Centres of the Island Council of Lanzarote, and is included under their network. It has also been co-financed by the government of the Canary Islands.