WORLD ACHIEVEMENTS

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXVII, Issue 12799, 21 July 1939, Page 2

WORLD ACHIEVEMENTS

PAINTING UNDER THE SEA This is not a wild scheme. No attempt is being made to make fun of you. 'When we say that an artist has been painting under , the sea —setting up his easel, and getting to work as if he were in Hyde Park—we mean what we say. That is all. Everyone knows that America is justly proud of its Museum of Natural History, and we may imagine that no expense is too great in order to make every part of it the last , word in perfection. In order that the museum might have first-rate, exhibits of marine life. Dr Miner went off to the Pacific about five or six years ago, steering for cOral reefs in order that he might advise on the building of the Museum’s wonderful Coral Reef Group in the Hall of Ocean Life,

Rose Island Reef was chosen, and some, of the party took a cinema camera and diving dresses and other apparatus. Then they went under water.

, Along the bed of that kindly, warm, and translucent sea they moved, air being pumped into their helmets. They went from terrace to terrace of marvellously coloured coral, the sunlight filtering through so that every detail of the sea-forest was exquisite. From dark caves darted rainbow fish. Gorgeously' coloured flowers were about their feet; and seeing these, an artist in the company set up his metal easel, put his glass “canvas” in position, and using paint, with a palette knife instead of a brush, he made his pictures under the sea. All this was off the Bahamas.