Jason deCaires Taylor by Mats Edal

Jason deCaires Taylor

Jason deCaires Taylor is a sculptor, environmentalist and professional underwater photographer. Born in 1974 to an English father and Guyanese mother, Taylor graduated from the London Institute of Arts in 1998 with a BA Honours in Sculpture. He is very inspired by the landart movement, but himself missed to work with something not only addressing environmental issue, but also fixing it.

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Chosen Work

Nexus - underwater seapark

In the fjord close to Oslo, this artist has developed a new underwater park consisting of 12 sculptures both on land and in the fjord. Two people, a father and daughter is standing on a floating platform looking down in to ocean where 10 statues of children can be found floating, one to eight meters under sea level. Ether you swim out and look at them from the platform, dive in or see them from a boat.

His sculptures has a very traditional look which on land would look like any other statue, but as he places this extremely realistic statues of humans in the ocean, they become something very uniq. The nature takes over and gives them an expression which a human hand not can create. The story of this statues which can be seen on the photo below, is about our connection to the sea, as the sculpture shows a boy with a umbilical cord going deep in to sea. It tels a story that we are from the sea, born from it and connected to it. Just like the statues umbilical cord is connected to the bottom of the sea.

The goal of the project is to make people more aware of the the environmental issues concerning the world oceans. By using a long lasting ph-neutral cement with texture which makes coral polops attach he is recreating habitats. Creating environments where maritime life can trive and evolve. This underwater park was created in 2018 and are today being taken care by Sjøholmen children art center. They document and are often exploring this park as an way to let children discover the sea.

Talking to the leaders of Sjøholmen art center they told me that Taylor did a collaboration between divers and local marin biologist so he could shoos a spot where ocean life did not trive. He also did create a cement which had the right ph-level for the chosen area. The ocean area by Sjøholme had a seabed that was filled with mud and sand. Before it was not like this. Before it used to be rocks here, which plant life could hang on to. The reason why it is gone is believed to be the extensive development of housing alongside the rivers, where swamps are ruined. The swamp have the ability to filter the river water so sand and mud stays out of the river. So the situation today is that a lot of mud and sand run out from the rivers and fall down at sea bottom, ruining a lot of habitat. By adding these statues plant life has startet to grow and as a result the the fish is back.

There are no corals here, but mussels, anemones and tunicates have startet to grow on the statues, life that has the ability to filter the water and making in cleaner.

Scientific background

The death of coral reefs

and the ocean as we now it.

According to Taylor, planet earth is facing huge environmental issues which we need to react on immediately before its to late. In his work with the world oceans he points out that the sea plays a critical role in the world’s natural systems, like regulating our climate, absorbing carbon dioxide and producing oxygen. Also producing life which not only feeds animals but humans too. With todays evolvement, the sea is about to change in dramatical ways. With a multitude of threats present we are destroying or seas and scientists are predicting at current rates a dramatic demise of 90% of our natural reefs by 2050.

Global warming is a big threat as it cause the sea levels to rise and makes the temperatures increase. The global temperature will increase between 1.4-5.8° C before the next century. With warmer weather more frequent tropical storms and hurricanes will move across the worlds oceans. This playing a part in the destruction of coral reefs.

The amount of co2 released by human activity has not only made the earth a warmer place, but also now making the ocean more acidic. The Ocean acidification is happening because the water absorbs co2, making it more acidic. 30-40 prosent of the carbon dioxide from human activity is being absorbed by the ocean, rivers and lakes.This can effect the fish, which will find it harder to breath as well as species which trives on calcium carbonate will find it harder to construct shells and build coral formations.

As co2 have long been a focus when talking about pollution, the eyes have been opened for many new pollution treats, like oil, plastic, industrial and agricultural waste and chemicals. Especially plastic have gotten a lot of attention lately as many fish and birds have been found dead with a lot of plastic inside of them. Not surprising when we look at the numbers. 300 million tonnes of plastic is produced every year, half of only used one time, then thrown away. 8 toons goes in to the sea. These part are now being dissolved in to tiny pieces in a such fast rate that we can find places where plastic outnumber plankton by 26:1. All of this plastic is being eaten by fish and other spices mistaking them for prey and filter feeders ingest them alongside food particles. Plastic attracts toxic chemicals released from industry and agriculture and so the concentration of toxins increases as it moves up the food chain. But not only plastic oil is released in ocean, 12 % of the oil in the ocean is directly from oil spills, affecting both animal life on land and sea, especially the the birds and fur-bearing animals as oil is ruining their insulating ability, resulting in death from hypothermia. Another example of marine pollution is run off from agricultural waste and products. Pesticides are toxic to water systems however fertilisers are not directly toxic but their presence in water alters the nutrient and species composition of an ecosystem. Eutrophication is a rapid growth of algae from an excess of nutrients, this depletes the dissolved oxygen concentration and in turn fish and aquatic life die from hypoxia.

But not only is it pollution ruining the habitats of the ocean, but also human activity. 76% of all fisheries are fully exploited or overfished which are causing a lot of problems for natural marine habitats and coral reefs. The new methods of fishing are devastating fish stocks in a way which not can recover and killing certain fish that are keys in the food chain. The lack of herbivorous fish is causing an abundance of algal blooms which changes the ocean substrates, killing habitats and coral reefs.

Causes of habitat loss include Development (buildings, foreshores, marinas, roads and bridges, reclamation for aquaculture), Vegetation (mangrove) removal and logging, Dredging, Bottom trawling and Ship groundings, destructive fishing technique (dynamite and small meshed nets) and anchoring. Coastal cities are the places where habitats suffers the most, as we build housing, docks and port alongside the waterside, ruining the wetlands, mangroves and estuaries. Dams decreases natural nutrient and water salinity and alter fish migration routes. Tourism activities ( 80 prosent by the sea) affect ecosystems by directly damaging coral reefs with boats, anchors and divers as well as indirectly from land development, souvenir shells and corals, seafood and mangrove and coral lime used in construction. The loss of inshore coral reefs and costal mangroves adds to the damage causing sea levels to rise around 1mm per year which habitats cannot adapt to. Mangrove forests are now one of the worlds most threatened tropical ecosystems with more than 35% of the worlds mangroves already lost, in some regions cleared faster than the rate of rain forests. When mangrove, sea grass and salt marsh habitats are destroyed they are no longer able to sequester carbon dioxide from the environment and large amounts are emitted back into the atmosphere.

Coral reefs in the North- and Norwegian Sea

There are two different types of coral reefs in the world varm and cold. As you can see in the map (below) theres no warm reefs in Europa, nor in the North Sea or in the Norwegian sea. The Cold coral reefs can handle a environment that is dark and cold and can be found at 400 meters below sea level. They dont need the algae which thrive in warm and sunny places. The warm coral reefs needs to be in shallow warm and sunny water to exist, as they need the algae.

If we zoom inn at the North- and Norwegian Sea we can see that the environment for corals are much better in the Norwegian Sea then in the North Sea. The map (below left) shows that much of the north sea bottom is covered with mobile sediments such as mud and sand (yellow), and only about 20% is covered in coarse sands, gravels and rocks (red). As natural coral reefs need to have a hard surface to exist they have been found more often in the Norwegian sea. But still, even tough the North Sea consist of much sand and mud, corals can be found on the many shipwrecks, oil industry platforms columns and sea bottom tech installations. They are also known as Anthropogenic reefs, which are defined as a submerged structure, placed either deliberately or accidentally, which functions as a habitat for marine biota. Geogenic reefs are rocky reegs that can take the form of coastal rocky outcrops, boulders or gravel beds.

The lack of reefs in the North Sea is giving birth to the question, if artificial reefs should be placed in this kind of region. Reefs that are present in temperate sandy bottom environments, can more than double local biodiversity and increase the local biomass.

Looking at maps from older times and registered information all the way back to the 1500, theres a lot of information that concludes that the North Sea and as well Norwegian sea has suffered a great cause, because of overfishing.

In the Norwegian sea already 30-50 prosent of all coral reefs are ruined, because of overfishing and trawling.

Map-of-the-distribution-of-coral-reefs-a

Methods

Artificial reefs and habitats

Teaming up with an local diving center and a marin biologist

Using long lasting ph neutral cement - Textured so coral polops can attache

Position them down currant from natural reefs, so after spooning there are areas to settle

The formation is configured so that they aggregate fish on big scale

Colobarating pass different professions:

Jason deCaires Taylor - Artist of artificial reefs

Sjøholmen sea-art children center

Divers Nemo, Classic diving

Divers, FM Gruppen

Bjørn Erik Axelsen - Institute of marine research, Bergen - Norway

Finding a location and Developing a artificial habitat adopted to the context of Bergen and the North sea:

As we have contacted Sjøholmen sea-art children center which collaborated with Jason deCaires Taylor we are in contact with people that have worked with them, giving us information and wider contact network to develop a technique, in creating a artificial habitat. They have so far said that they will give us the contact information to Jason as he don't write anywhere online, how to make his kind of cement. He mentioned that he use local marin biologist to adopt his cement to different environments with different pH value. So therefore we follow the same tracks and have contacted local divers and scientist at the institute of marine research so they can help us in the question of where to develop a habitat and how to adopt it to a local ecosystem and ocean chemistry.

First test:

As a first test, which for us is so far seen as a failure, we did create our first underwater habitat. We used a maritim cement which probably have a way to high pH value to attract the best amount of sea life. We did get a rough cement, leaving a lot of different surface qualities. Like for instance marks, small holes and fibers. Also easy to make own marks creating different holes and marks in size and form. We added also some natural elements as stone and wood as a test to what would attract more life.

This is fore us only the first test out of many, we need more information on the topic before we can act. Waiting patiently on answer from Maritime Institute and local divers. As well reading more on the topic.