Strange Objects Under the Sea

Kristian von Homsleth is a Danish artist who aims to sink a giant, metal, star-shaped sculpture – that will have at its center a cylinder filled with (donated) human blood and hair – in the Marianas Trench toward the end of this year. Hornsleth – who considers the sculpture to be a meditation on life, eternity, and the imperviousness of large-scale art projects – expects the sculpture will remain sunk for 10 to 15 thousand years.

It got us wondering what else has been purposely sunk in the sea...

Having nothing at all to do with vehicles is a submerged temple in Thailand. Wat Tilokaram is thought to have been built more than 500 years ago. It was high and dry for most of that time. Then, some seventy years ago, the temple went underwater when a large freshwater lake was created up and around the temple, which these days can be seen poking out of the water and can be visited by boat. Plans to restore the temple by draining the lake – home to aquatic plants and many species of fish – were bandied about, but recently abandoned on the grounds that draining the lake would hurt the temple after all these years under water, and would also hurt local fisherman. In this case, the mountain came to Mohammad, but reportedly more temples in Thailand are now unintentionally going under as sea levels rise.