Scuba Geek

Artificial Reef plans to mimic the `lost city’. A scuba divers playground. January 30, 2006

Posted by Andy Carroll in : OceanDiving , trackback

I had heard of this project nearly a year ago. It seems that Gary has been successful in getting this off the ground, or underneath the ocean as it where. It sometimes an emotive subject, the issue of scuba diving on wrecks on which people have lost their lives, and many people are against the idea of scuba diving on ‘war graves’. It now seems that this project will be funded by donars who wish for their remains to be incorporated into the Atlantis columns and balustrades, in which case many scuba divers will be diving on one large graveyard.

Gary Levine’s Atlantis Reef Project received final approval from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Miami-Dade’s Department of Environmental Resources Management earlier this month to construct the sprawling network of cement and bronze statues in 50 feet of water. Levine says construction should begin in March, with the first phase ready to receive scuba divers at the end of April. Levine said the reef will take three to five years to complete at a cost of between $3 million and $5 million.

”It will be five concentric circles, 900 feet in diameter, as big as three football fields,” Levine said. “You can see it from the air as a compass pointing due north. There will be 40 specific themed sculptures incorporating the elements you’d have in any city — arts, government, the military, theater.”