Top 10 Most Haunting Statues Found Underwater

The Ancient Romans loved to party, and Baiae was the place to go. Well-known for its scandalous offerings and rampant corruption, Baiae was a resort town located on the shore of the Gulf of Naples. Long after the site had been abandoned, the lower half of the town fell into the water owing to seismic volcanic activity. The Sunken City of Baiae is now an archaeological park, and visitors can pay to snorkel or scuba dive through the impeccably preserved ruins. It’s certainly beautiful, but there’s just something a little eerie about swimming through antique art and architecture.

A columbarium is a building that stores funeral urns. They’re somewhat creepy on the best of days - never mind one that is located underwater. Also known as Atlantis Reef, the Neptune Memorial Reef was intentionally built underwater and is located three miles off the coast of Key Biscane, Florida. Situated forty feet underwater and spanning sixteen acres, the Reef’s features are made from a combination of cremated human remains and cement, and the site is home to some epic features like gates and stone roads. Atlantis is certainly a fitting name, as this is a true City of the Dead.

Located in the Philippines is an island province called Bohol. Bohol is home to the Danajon Bank which has weakened in recent years due to various forms of illegal fishing, including dynamite and cyanide fishing. To prevent further destruction, the local governmental body had two religious statues installed underwater. The hope is that these statues will remind fishermen that God created the ocean and its various forms of life, and therefore deter them from illegal fishing. It also helps boost the economy, as tourists and experienced divers flock to the location to see the underwater statues.

Fake or not, seeing one of those Easter Island heads underwater is enough to give anyone the chills. Officially known as the Moai, the Easter Island figures are some of the most famous carvings in world history. In 1994, Kevin Costner produced a movie called “Rapa-Nui”, which is set on Easter Island. Unfortunately, the movie was an enormous bomb. Fake moai were made for “Rapa-Nui” and eventually placed underwater off the real Easter Island, as a tourist attraction. At least something worthwhile came from the movie.

In 2014, sculptor Jason deCaires Taylor placed a massive sculpture underwater just off the coast of Nassau in the Bahamas. Situated about fifteen feet underwater and spanning the ocean floor to the surface, Ocean Atlas sits in a kneeling position with her head resting on her left knee. This reinterpretation of an ancient myth is made from sustainable materials, weighs sixty tons, and according to underwatersculpture.com, it is “the largest single sculpture ever to be deployed underwater.” Aside from the environmental statement, the statue is also meant to attract tourists, and provide marine life with an artificial reef for colonization.

A major part of Greek mythology, Amphitrite was the wife of Poseidon, and therefore, Queen of the Sea. So an underwater statue makes a lot of sense! And located off the Sunset House dive resort in the Grand Cayman Islands is a statue of Amphitrite. Nearly sixty feet below the surface, and made from silicone bronze, the statue stands nine feet tall and has attracted tourists and divers since its creation in the early 2000s. Also located in Grand Cayman is Simon Morris’s Guardian of the Reef - a thirteen-foot-tall bronze sculpture that stands in front of LightHouse Point.

This stellar collection of underwater art is located off Grenada in the Caribbean Sea. Like the Ocean Atlas, this park was created by diver and sculptor Jason deCaires Taylor. The park consists of over 65 individual concrete structures. These include a man sitting at a typewriter, a female laying on the ocean floor, human heads fixated to a rock face, and a beautiful ring of 26 children standing in a circle and holding hands. Many of these concrete sculptures were actually created using life casts of the local population, and they currently reside in Molinere Bay at depths of six to twenty-five feet.

Art historians can have a field day in Crimea’s Tarkhankut Peninsula. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, a diver by the name of Vladimir Broumensky collected fallen statues of Soviet leaders and cast them into the sea. These included busts of major figures like Lenin and Stalin. The underwater collection was known as The Alley of Leaders, and it now stands as a museum to notable communist figures. The museum now features over fifty statues and various replicas of world-famous structures, like London Bridge and the Eiffel Tower.

There are actually three Christ of the Abyss statues located throughout the world. Perhaps the most famous is located in Italy. Placed in the Mediterranean in 1954, this original bronze Christ of the Abyss stands eight feet tall, and underwent major cleaning and restoration work in both 2003 and 2018. A second statue was erected in Grenada in 1961. A third and final Christ was gifted to the Underwater Society of America, and eventually placed off Key Largo. All three statues remain underwater, and the American version is featured in the Netflix drama “Bloodline.”

Otherwise known as MUSA, the Cancún Underwater Museum is located off the eastern tip of Mexico and contains 500 underwater sculptures - most of which were created by, yes, sculptor Jason deCaires Taylor. Located in Cancún National Marine Park, and found at depths ranging from ten to twenty feet, the museum contains more than 400 human sculptures interacting with the ocean in various ways. Well, those… and a Volkswagen. Like most of Taylor’s other works, the museum is meant as both an environmental statement and a tourist attraction. And what a tourist attraction it is.