Reefline: Miami’s Underwater Sculpture Park Built to Restore Coral Reefs
Off the coast of Miami Beach, Reefline sits underwater as a seven-mile sculpture park. It mixes large-scale art with science to help rebuild coral reefs damaged by decades of beach dredging and climate threats. Ximena Caminos started the project after learning about Miami’s lost near-shore reefs, smothered when the city dumped sand to widen beaches in the 1970s, as marine biologist Colin Foord explained to the Financial Times.
The Idea Behind Reefline
Caminos, an Argentine artist and curator who moved to Miami years ago, came up with Reefline around 2019. She wanted public art that did more than look good. A sunk concrete Jose Cuervo bar from 2000, now covered in coral and fish, gave her the proof it could work, per the Financial Times. She launched it in 2022 with a $5 million grant from the City of Miami Beach. The full project needs about $40 million over 11 phases to cover the shoreline.
Reefline acts as an ecological corridor to revive part of the Florida Reef Tract, the world’s third-largest coral system. That tract has lost about 90 percent of its coral, collapsing habitats for fish and marine life, according to founder Caminos in Observer.
First Sculpture: Concrete Coral
Leandro Erlich’s Concrete Coral kicked things off, as The New York Times, Smithsonian Magazine, and Travel + Leisure report. It features 22 full-scale concrete cars in a traffic jam formation, sunk about 20 feet underwater. Spots vary slightly: 600 feet offshore near South Beach per The Art Newspaper, 800 feet off South Beach says the Financial Times, and 780 feet out at 4th Street notes Observer.
The cars use marine-grade, pH-neutral concrete safe for the ocean. Scientists from Reefline’s Miami Native Coral Lab have attached corals—2,200 fragments already on this piece, grown from resilient strains that survived 2023 bleaching. The plan calls for planting one million corals across the park. Fish moved in fast; months after install, it was already alive with marine creatures, Caminos told Observer.
Why Create It? Art Meets Restoration
Miami faces sea-level rise head-on, with reefs that once let people snorkel right off Ocean Drive now gone. Reefline fights back by giving corals places to grow while making art open to anyone who swims, snorkels, or dives—no tickets needed. José Carlos Diaz, chief curator at Pérez Art Museum Miami, calls it homegrown: led by locals like Caminos, curator Brandi Reddick, artist Carlos Betancourt, and architect Alberto Latorre, as he shared with The Art Newspaper.
- Restores habitats and boosts biodiversity
- Protects against erosion and flooding
- Awakens people to ocean problems through visible art
- Creates a living lab for better coral techniques
Experts note limits. Without cutting emissions, restored reefs may not last, says Richard Aronson of Florida Tech in the Financial Times. Still, projects like this build data and momentum, adds Miami Beach’s Lindsey Precht.
Future pieces include Miami Reef Star by Betancourt and Latorre in 2026, plus a marine learning center. Caminos sees it as seven miles of hope, starting in Miami but maybe spreading worldwide.