A seven-foot, 500-pound robot sculpture will be submerged to its final resting place Wednesday, 100 feet below the ocean's surface as part of the Shipwreck Park underwater art exhibition.
The sculpture, known as the 'Mechan H2O,' is made out of steel and depicts a robot scuba diver. When submerged, it will sit on the stern of the Lady Luck sunken ship in Pompano Beach.
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WATCH HEREThe sculpture is part of the City’s public art program, and was on display for one year just south of the Fisher Family Pier in Pompano Beach.
“What’s not cool about this sculpture?" asked diver and Pompano Beach Commissioner Andrea McGee. "There’s so few parks around the world that have underwater scuba sculpture gardens that people can come down and see and watch them as they grow.”
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Tyler FuQua Creations, Inc., an artist team from Portland, Oregon, was commissioned to design and fabricate the piece.
“It’s about art. It’s about education. It’s about artificial reef program, creating biodiversity underwater, and a great place for divers to come and tourists to come and visit,“ said Shipwreck Park's Jeff Torode.
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On Wednesday, the sculpture was loaded by a front-end loader onto a 45’ catamaran at the Alsdorf Park boat ramp located at 2901 NE 14th Street.
“We had to get a front loader to load it on a trailer, bring it over here, load it on the boat, and we have a whole team of divers that are gonna slowly descend it to the bottom and put it in place on a receiver that we already have on the ship,” Torode said.
Lady Luck is a 324-foot tanker vessel that was sunk on July 23rd, 2016, as an artificial reef 1½ miles off Pompano Beach’s shore. It is one of the biggest contributions to Florida’s artificial reef system and one of the most easily accessible major dive sites in the nation.
The ship is the centerpiece of what is known as Shipwreck Park, which is surrounded by 16 other existing wrecks covered with marine life.
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