Long before the arrival of Art Basel, the ocean and its long white beaches were Miami’s main attraction. What many don’t know is that the city’s postcard-perfect image is the result of local governments dumping millions of tons of sand along the coast to widen beaches that were once far narrower or, in some areas, almost nonexistent, irreversibly altering the fragile marine ecosystem. The imported sand—coarser, lighter and biologically foreign—smothered seagrass beds and disrupted the coastal ecology that once fringed Miami’s natural shoreline. Most critically, repeated dredging and resanding buried and damaged the region’s unique near-shore reef tract, one of the only shallow coral systems of its kind in the continental U.S. The result is an engineered paradise built atop a delicate and now endangered marine world.
Now, a one-of-a-kind cultural project aims to repair some of that damage, rebuilding the precious reef line through large-scale, site-specific art. During Miami Art Week, REEFLINE, a nonprofit initiative, is showing its groundbreaking seven-mile underwater public sculpture park, snorkel trail and hybrid reef off the coast. The organization’s mission is to restore a vital section of the Florida Reef Tract, the world’s third-largest coral system, while fostering biodiversity, protecting the shoreline from erosion and rising sea levels and raising public awareness about marine conservation. Powered by a multidisciplinary collective of marine biologists, coastal engineers, designers, artists and environmental specialists, its ambitious plan was conceived by Shohei Shigematsu/OMA with both aquatic life and community life in mind, connecting shore and sea through a new model of sustainability.
Art plays a central role in the project, which proposes a different paradigm for relating to the environment through an act of creativity rooted in collaboration. Submerged 20 feet underwater and 780 feet offshore around the beach at 4th Street, Leandro Erlich’s Concrete Coral (22 full-scale cars arranged in a surreal underwater traffic jam that reflects the tension between human impact and nature’s resilience) is open to snorkelers and divers. Cast in marine-grade concrete using 3D-printed molds, the sculptures have been seeded with 2,200 corals cultivated at REEFLINE’s Miami Native Coral Lab in Allapattah.
Only a few months after the unveiling, the sculpture had already become a living ecosystem teeming with fish and marine creatures of every size, founder Ximena Caminos tells Observer. The cars serve as a metaphor for carbon emissions, she explains—an image of how we are quite literally driving ourselves toward extinction, while transforming a symbol of pollution into one of hope.
“REEFLINE is an ecological corridor helping rebuild what once existed: a fringe reef connected to the Florida Reef Tract. That system has suffered a loss of about 90 percent of its coral, and when coral dies, the habitat collapses,” Caminos explains. Once the reef goes, the fish have nowhere to go, triggering a domino effect of biodiversity loss. “The reef supports about 5 percent of all marine life. Our work focuses on enhancing marine habitat, but doing it through art.”
The project evolved naturally from Caminos’s lifelong connection to the arts; before it, she spent years working in Miami’s cultural sector on master planning, public art and significant installations on the city’s beaches. “REEFLINE grew naturally out of that environment,” she says. “It was like taking what we were already doing on land and pushing it a little further into the water, where it could have a deeper impact.” In a city shaped by the ocean as much as the arts, the combination felt inevitable. “I think REEFLINE is actually rewiring, culturally, what Miami can become,” she adds, convinced that what begins in Miami Beach, once seen as ground zero for sea-level rise, could become a global model for how coastal cities can be both resilient and creative in confronting environmental crises.
The power of art as a catalyst, Caminos emphasizes, lies in its ability to create unexpected collaboration. “There’s a kind of cross-disciplinary magnetism. When the arts call, people respond differently.” By transforming art into a catalyst for ecosystem restoration and public education, REEFLINE demonstrates how creativity can drive tangible solutions for a warming planet.
Working with art has also shaped how the project is funded. The city’s major contribution came through a cultural grant, and all subsequent public grants have also been cultural, not scientific. REEFLINE is supported by a $5 million Arts & Culture General Obligation Bond approved by Miami Beach voters in 2022 and early backing from the Knight Arts Challenge. The organization also fundraises independently through philanthropic, corporate and charitable donors. Its 11-phase plan will ultimately require $40 million to extend the underwater corridor across the full seven miles of Miami Beach and outplant thousands of corals. “We’ve been incredibly fortunate with our supporters,” Caminos says. “People who helped shape Miami into what it is today decided to support us, recognizing that REEFLINE represents what Miami will become in the future.”
To date, the organization has secured approximately $1.5 million in philanthropic donations, bringing total funding to roughly $6.5 million. The full master plan still requires approximately $33 million, underscoring the project’s scope and ambition, but the civic engagement has been particularly striking. “Miami residents actually voted to tax themselves to make this project happen,” Caminos points out. “That was a huge moment. It showed a fundamental civic awareness of the city’s environmental vulnerabilities.”
According to Caminos, what distinguishes REEFLINE is that it represents an entirely new typology. Not simply an underwater park or a submerged gallery, it functions as a system: a place where art, science, and marine ecology meet in ways that defy categorization. Caminos sees it as an open-air classroom and living laboratory where art accelerates science and citizens become co-creators in reshaping our relationship with nature. “REEFLINE is civic infrastructure,” she says. “It’s a civic amenity, like the High Line in New York or the Underline here in Miami. It’s a community project.”
Education has been central to the initiative from the start, extending beyond the water to become a community platform for cultural engagement. Through partnerships such as Dream in Green’s “Green Schools Challenge,” ocean conservation and contemporary art are being woven into school curricula, reaching more than 10,000 students, 125 schools and 200 teachers through artist residencies, studio labs, field learning and public exhibitions. “We’re currently part of the curriculum in approximately 50 schools,” Caminos says. “Kids interview me all the time because the idea feels like a kind of science fiction that captures their imagination.”
The Community Coral Outplanting Program invites volunteers and residents to plant corals alongside scientists, turning restoration into a shared civic practice. Once a month, the REEFLINE team anchors its Floating Marine Learning Center on site in partnership with the University of Miami’s Rescue a Reef program, offering hands-on experience in coral gardening and restoration. “We make sure people can actually experience REEFLINE,” she adds. “Throughout the year, you can join art-and-science discovery dives through our local dive-boat partner.”
The artist commissions are evolving just as organically. British artist Petroc Sesti joined after proposing a monumental sculpture based on the heart of a blue whale, made possible through a rare 3D scan of a pristine whale that had washed ashore with a fully intact heart, which was retrieved by scientists at the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada.
The organization has also launched the Blue Arts Award, an environmental art prize that identifies new contributors to REEFLINE. An all-women jury—Paola Antonelli (MoMA), Jessica Morgan (Dia Foundation), Cecilia Alemani (the High Line), Mami Kataoka (Mori Art Museum) and Carla Acevedo-Yates—nominates a shortlist of three artists who travel to Miami, study marine ecology, work with the team and compete for the commission. The winner receives $25,000 and, more importantly, the opportunity to have their design turned into a functional reef at an investment of roughly $1 million.
Caminos points out the art at REEFLINE is invisible unless you dive and is more important for fish than for people. “Commissions like this are scarce; it’s not every day an artist gets to create something for a public plaza and for marine species at once.”
The marine response has already surpassed expectations. “The first time I jumped off the boat, I panicked—I thought sharks had surrounded me. They were giant tarpons,” she recalls with a laugh, describing the explosion of life around the installation only weeks after placement. The organization maintains scientific oversight through a dedicated science director and partnerships with universities, turning the reef into a vital observatory of Miami’s changing marine ecosystem. Rescue a Reef monitors which species settle and how quickly the habitat forms. “It’s unfolding faster than anyone expected. It feels surreal—almost otherworldly, like something out of Atlantis.”
Long-term monitoring will be crucial to understanding how similar projects that merge art and ecology might be mounted in other coastal cities. Ultimately, REEFLINE offers a blueprint for a new way of encountering art, shaped as much by biology as by human design. Nature becomes a co-creator: the artist establishes the initial structure and the ecosystem completes it, transforming the work in ways no human hand could, raising questions about the evolving role of the arts in the face of environmental crises. “There’s always been activist art and political art; art has shaped every major social movement,” Caminos says. “But here, art isn’t just raising awareness; it is a solution. That’s what makes REEFLINE so compelling to me.”
REEFLINE’s Floating Marine Learning Center is open during Miami Art Week for 1.5-hour excursions with the team, artists and scientists on December 1-5 at 9 a.m., 11 a.m. and 1 p.m.
