TETHYS PROJECT-Around the World Ocean Burial (1986 to present)

Categories: Marine Life, Research, Other
Organization Name: 
Art Dreams Inc
Location: 
PO Box 306, High Falls NY 12440
Classroom/Project team/names: 
Robert Schuler
Email address: 
artdreams [at] hvi [dot] net
Powerpoint / PDF / Zip / Document: 

What’s 26,000 miles long, weighs 237,000 pounds, is totally invisible to man, and yet more permanent than the Great Wall of China? The Tethys Project.

The Tethys Project is an ongoing Ocean Art Burial project to circle the globe with a necklace of granite cubes dropped in the ocean around the world. The cubes are 200 kilos each, 50 centimeters on a side. Dropped one every 100 miles, covering at the moment about 60% of the distance around the world. On five sides text and drawings are deeply cut into the granite, the last side has a map of the location, latitude and longitude of its position on the bottom.

A kind of granite graphic novel buried in the worlds oceans. NY artist Bob Schuler has been throwing granite texts and drawings into the worlds’ oceans since 1986.

Oceanographers speculate the blocks can survive from 60 to 200 million years depending on where they land on the ocean floor.

Tethys next leg is dropping granite cubes from the Galapagos to Tahiti a voyage of 3000 miles of open ocean.

Started in 1986 Bob Schuler has dropped granite markers every 100 miles from Red Sea through the Mediterranean Sea ,the Atlantic Ocean, the Caribbean, the Panama Canal and into the Pacific as far as the Galapagos Islands. Text and drawings are cut into the granite blocks.