Welcome to the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service, with me, Anishkumat

and Adiyoti. Today I'm taking you back to 2006 and to the opening of a brand new art

gallery. But not the kind with a cafe and a gift shop. I'll know, grab your goggles

and come with me on an underwater adventure in Grenada, because this exhibition is 8

meters below sea level.

So I installed all the sculptures in an area called Mollen Air Bay, which was off the

west coast of Grenada. It had very unusual topography. It had a series of underwater ravines

and channels. It had these beautiful areas of white sand surrounded by sort of little

coral enclaves.

That's Jason DeKerry's Taylor, the artist responsible for the world's first submarine gallery.

He was a trained sculptor, turned scuba diving instructor, who had always fancied the idea

of placing his art underwater, but hadn't quite got around to it. But that all changed

in September 2004, when Hurricane Ivan hit.

So it hours the islands were pounded with 120 miles per hour winds, which left most trees

leafless, bent or broken. Numerous buildings were flattened, and between 80 to 90 percent

of those left standing were without roofs or heavily damaged.

When a hurricane hits an underwater area, it basically lifts everything off the sea floors

and rocks, boulders, stones, and then it kind of scours the surface of the sea bed with

it. And so any fragile corals, sea fans, sponges all get completely scraped off and ground

down.

The once vivid landscape of the underwater world had had its vibrance scraped away and

replaced with a coral graveyard. But because of the amount of destruction on land, little

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