Museo Atlántico is the world's first underwater art museum in the Atlantic Ocean, lying on the seabed about 14 metres down in the bay off Playa Blanca. British sculptor Jason deCaires Taylor installed more than 300 concrete sculptures on the ocean floor, including a group of life-size human figures arranged in a circle, a cross-section of a passenger boat, and a series of busts. The sculptures are made from pH-neutral concrete and are designed to function as artificial reefs — within a few years of submersion they become colonised by marine life, the stone faces gradually covered in coral and encrusting algae.
Access is by snorkelling or scuba diving with one of the dive centres in town; you cannot visit independently. The sculptures are in the easy, flat-bottom bay, making them accessible even for relatively inexperienced divers. The effect underwater is genuinely strange — a silent crowd of human forms, dimly lit, already inhabited by fish and weed. The museum carries a message about climate change and the future of the oceans, but it functions perfectly well as spectacle without the subtext.