Rome (AP) – Police Divers have cleaned one of the largest underwater attractions of the Mediterranean Sea, with the help of water hoses under pressure to remove crustaceans from the statue of the “Christ of the abyss” that was placed on the seabed off the northern coast of Italy in 1954 in 1954 in 1954 in 1954 in 1954.
The 2.5-meter (garden) High Bronze statue, which shows Christ with his hands lifted in blessing, was made with the help of the melted medals of the fallen soldiers of Italy, guns and ships and is appreciated here as a powerful symbol of sacrifice in the Second World War. Similar images can be found on Key Largo, Florida and in Grenada.
The statue is approximately 300 meters (meters) from the beach between the Portofino and Camogli resort cities, on the Northern Ligurian coast of Italy, at a depth of approximately 18 meters (Yards).
The archaeological office of the Italian Ministry of Culture says that, because of the proximity of the coast and the relatively shallow depth, the 'Christ of the abyss' site is the most visited dive site in the Mediterranean Sea. The site, located in the bay of San Fruttuoso, also draws Kayakers and Paddleboarders, because the statue of the surface can be seen.
Every year, the police diverse the statue of carefully water to remove bacteria and corrosive corsts that have gathered. The cleaning, which took place this year on August 19, uses seawater itself and does not cause any damage to the bronze or the marine ecosystem because the microorganisms are released and released into the sea, said Alessandra Cabella, art historian of the Ligurian Archeology Superintendent's Office.
“There are a lot of beautiful fish that come to watch,” she said in an interview on Thursday. “It is really an activity with no impact on the environment.”
The water formation technique has been in use since 2004, when the statue was removed from the water for a complete restoration after a hand had been demolished and re -confirmed.
It was then that restorers realized that the previous underwater cleaning method – scraping the bronze with metal brushes to remove the shellfish – had caused irreparable damage to the surface of the image, creating crevasses in the bronze patina that pulled even more marine material to accumulate themselves.
The statue is also delicate because, when it was made, by the Italian artist Guido Galletti in honor of an Italian diver who died in the area, it was filled with cement and iron bars to stabilize it on the seabed. The presence of the iron helped to corrode the bronze from the inside, Cabella said.
