BVI's Newest Shipwreck Survived Pearl Harbor and Is Definitely Topped with a Kraken

One of only five surviving ships from the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, the YO-44 — aka Kodiak Queen — was not in line to be converted to a museum or studied for history-book fodder. Instead, the former Navy fuel barge was wasting away in a Tortola shipyard, waiting to be scrapped for metal.

That was before a forward-thinking group of entrepreneurs found out about the ship. Now, the 158-foot vessel has been repurposed as an eye-catching artificial reef — called the BVI Art Reef — complete with a massive kraken-like sculpture guarding its deck. The wreck, sunk at about 65 feet at a site south of Mountain Point off Virgin Gorda in the British Virgin Islands, has seen its first divers after being scuttled in April.

The kraken sculpture — with its 80-foot tentacles — is made out of rebar and mesh and was designed to act as a coral out-planting platform. Coral restoration, goliath grouper rehabilitation and conservation education are among the project’s goals.

SEE MORE: The World's Best Wrecks for Diving

The project is a joint effort that can trace its origins to a think-tank challenge on Richard Branson’s Necker Island last year. Branson, along with entrepreneurial group Maverick1000, non-profits Unite BVI and Beneath the Waves, and art production team Secret Samurai are among those seeing the Art Reef to the finish.

"This project provides an exciting opportunity to capture people's attention and then to refocus it on important issues facing our oceans,” says Branson. “Perhaps most importantly, however, this project will hopefully excite our youth here in the BVI to put a mask on and to explore the magic of our underwater world and be inspired to spend their adult years advocating for how important it is to protect our reefs."

The goal is to not only host one of the most inventive artificial reef dives in the world, but to also refresh it with new sculptures to give return visitors a new experience with each dive.

Check out these photos from the construction and sinking: