MONTEGO BAY, St James — Nearly six months after it was announced, the underwater sculpture park proposed for the Montego Bay Marine Park has yet to sink its first sculpture.

According to executive director for the Montego Bay Marine Park Trust Hugh Shim, Smilozone — the group with which it has partnered on the project — has yet to secure the permits needed.

“We actually have one mermaid that we were going to put down but unfortunately the process that Smilozone was doing is a little bit halted. The major project is to have sculpture parks all over Jamaica so because that project is so big and so varied, it’s taking a while for the proper approvals,” Shim told the Jamaica Observer West.

In October 2021, it was announced that the Marine Park and Smilozone, a waste management company, had established a partnership that would see two sites accommodating at least 10 sculptures in each space.

“The underwater park was supposed to be an attraction where you can go and see the statues under the water, snorkel around or use the glass-bottom boat. But the other function is really to grow corals and to have it attract fish and marine life. So the more of them you put down is the more coral and marine life you would attract. So it’s an attraction and what would we call a fish aggregating device,” Shim explained.

The marine park is now mulling its options as it tries to get the project moving.

“We would love to probably re-evaluate the situation and try to do Montego Bay alone, because that is in our interest,” said Shim.

This, he said, would involve making a separate application for sculptures to be submerged at the Montego Bay location, then slowly adding sculptures as sponsors’ donations come in. The goal would still be to have 10 sculptures.

He is convinced the sculpture park would be a big hit, especially if it was given a Jamaican twist.

“All the water sports operators would just jump on it because there are underwater sculpture parks all over the world and even in the Caribbean, huge ones… I want ours to be themed with just mermaids, Jamaican-style mermaids or mermaids would be playing football or cricket,” said Shim.

While they wait for the underwater sculpture park, he stressed that the marine park has its own mermaid attraction which will soon reopen for business. It had been closed because of the novel coronavirus pandemic.

“Coming the middle of this month, we will start announcing that the mermaid tours are back, where persons can swim with our real-life mermaids and children can interact with them,” he said.