Art in nature: using sculpture to preserve and enhance the Tuscan marine environment. From the article:

[Paolo] Fanciulli noticed the effects of trawling as early as the 1980s: the damaged ecosystem was affecting his catch and having an impact on his livelihood. So, along with some other local fishermen and activists from Greenpeace, he blocked a commercial port in Tuscany in protest….

It wasn’t enough to stop illegal fishing, however. In 2006, a desperate Tuscan government dropped concrete blocks into the sea in an effort to disrupt the trawlers. Fanciulli says they didn’t work, however, as they were too far apart and the nets simply dragged between them. He got permission from Arpa, the agency for environmental protection, to drop an additional 80 blocks at his own expense. Still, however, he wasn’t satisfied, and his thoughts turned to the shipwrecks he’d loved as a boy. “I didn’t just want concrete,” he says. “I was fascinated with beautiful antiquities underwater.”…

He asked a quarry in nearby Carrara if they could donate two marble blocks that he could use to make sculptures. “They donated 100 instead.”

Via word of mouth, contributions from tourists and online crowdfunding, Fanciulli persuaded artists including Giorgio Butini, Massimo Lippi, Beverly Pepper and Emily Young to carve sculptures from the marble. Then he took them out to sea and lowered them in.

The underwater sculptures create both a physical barrier for nets and a unique underwater museum. The sculptures are placed in a circle, 4m apart, with an obelix at the centre carved by the Italian artist Massimo Catalani. Emily Young provided four sculptures, each weighing 12 tons, she calls “guardians”; nearby lies a mermaid by the young artist Aurora Vantaggiato. Lippi has contributed 17 sculptures representing Siena’s contrade, or medieval districts….

Marine life of all kinds appears to be returning. Algae covers the statues, and lobsters have taken up residence nearby. Talamone is a turtle recovery centre – part of the Tartalife project – and more turtles have been seen, as have dolphins. “In the past it was unusual to see dolphins near the coast,” Faniculli says. “They normally stay offshore, but as industrial fishing destroyed the seabed, they moved close to the statues because, due the repopulation, there is food.”

For more information see La Casa dei Pesci website.

h/t Tonya Kircher