Towering nearly 17 feet tall, the statue of the kneeling young Bahamian girl shows her supporting the ceiling of the water on her shoulders.

Ocean Atlas was created with a high-density, pH-neutral marine cement that's engineered to last for hundreds of years.

A local student served as the model for the statue. The work was inspired by one of the Titans in Greek myth, Atlas, whose eternal punishment was to hold the world on his back.

The Dream Collector is in 8 meters of water, in the MUSA Collection, Cancun/Isla Mujeres, Mexico. ( Source )

Jason deCaires Taylor is no stranger to underwater sculptures, and is known around the world for his amazing installations using pH-neutral concrete that are accessible by swimmers, snorkelers and scuba divers. Over time, his sculptures change colors and become covered with coral and biological growth, eventually becoming home to new organisms as artificial reefs.

Some of his most notable work includes La Evolucion Silenciosa in Cancun (2010) – the largest underwater collection of art with 403 life-size cement people spread over 420 square meters, and Vicissitudes in Grenada (2006) – a ring of 26 children holding hands and facing into the current.

For his latest installation Ocean Atlas, Jason deCaires Taylor teamed up with BREEF – the Bahamas Reef Environment Educational Foundation – to bring attention to the issue of coral degradation, overfishing, global warming and water pollution in our oceans. The design of a young woman hunched over – much like Titan Atlas holding the world on his back – symbolically represents the shouldering of the environmental burden we are asking of younger future generations.

View this photo gallery of his latest Bahamas installation, along with some of his previous underwater sculptures. For additional information and photos, visit his website at http://www.underwatersculpture.com/

Also check out the video that The Creators Project made about his latest work: