MUSA — Salón Manchones

You drop onto sand at the edge of Manchones Reef. Salón Manchones is much the larger of MUSA's two galleries — 477 of the 500 sculptures placed by the end of 2013 stand here, against 23 in the Nizuc gallery — so the dive is a slow swim between groups of figures rather than one circuit of a single installation. Depth is quoted at about ten metres, so the limit on the dive is air rather than the computer.

The main work, The Silent Evolution, is more than 400 human figures depicted interacting with the environment, and it reads best from low and wide. The water is shallow and the light comes straight down onto subjects that hold still, which is why this is a photographer's dive above all: average visibility runs to about eighteen metres and the water sits around twenty-eight degrees. Across MUSA's galleries the sculptures sit between three and six metres, and about ten on this one.

The concrete is the subject, but so is what has grown on it. Elk horn and brain coral, sea fans and other types have grown all over the sculptures, and the hollow interior of the Volkswagen gives lobsters, urchins and other crustaceans a place to live, with protection and food for juvenile species. The gallery exists because the reef beside it was taking damage from tourists, anchors and divers, so keep fins off the sand and off the figures.