Museums of a new kind are opening their doors in France: Cannes, Marseille and Ajaccio are inaugurating underwater museums. These underwater, artistic spaces, some of which are designed to raise ecological awareness, have multiplied in recent years. Already present in Mexico, they now exist in Norway, the Canary Islands, Australia, Greece and now in France. A guided tour a few meters under the sea : to your masks, get ready, dive !
Put on your flippers and your diving mask to visit a museum? An unusual experience that is now possible in France! Off the coast of the city, Marseille has just opened its first underwater museum, as Cannes will soon do in the Gulf of La Napoule at the end of November. A statue of Poseidon, human faces, characters forming a circle or a giant sea urchin … these are all strange underwater statues that amateurs and curious people alike will be able to discover.
If this innovative museum is now landing in France, it is off the island of Grenada that it all began on the initiative of an English sculptor and diving instructor: Jason deCaires Taylor. In 2006, he decided to raise public awareness of the need to preserve underwater biodiversity by immersing works of art in the Caribbean Sea. In the heart of the reefs damaged by Hurricane Ivan, disturbing silhouettes appear, destined to reintroduce certain extinct species. These evolutionary sculptures, made of ecological marine cement with neutral pH, serve as a base for the development of corals and invite starfish and fish to come and live there. By offering a spectacle as aesthetic as it is disturbing, they invite you to dive into the depths of the sea where natural history is in the hands of man.
