Cologne (Germany)- International festivals of sand sculptures have become increasingly popular on the world’s beaches and many such sculptures have been preserved in museums.

The “Sea Adventures” exhibition opened on April 8 in Ahlbeck, Usedom Island located in the Baltic Sea between Germany and Poland.

The exhibition known as “Usedom’s Fourth Festival” will run till November 2017. It comes as part of a series of sand sculpture exhibitions held in the German island.

The event has seen the participation of 50 artists from Germany, Iceland, Lithuania, Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Hungary, and Belarus. Myriads of artists, assistants, and volunteers are also expected to take part in the exhibition’s activities, sculptures, and preparations.

The third edition of Usedom’s Festival was themed “the celebrities of Pop Music”, while this year, the exhibition will feature artworks on sea adventures. Statues of pirate lDavy Jones from (Pirates of the Caribbean) and Captain Nemo have replaced last year’s statues of David Bowie, Robbie Williams, and many others.

Artists partaking in the festival use knifes and construction utensils to work on their statues, instead of brushes and oil. They also use small cranes so they can reach high sculptures.

Sculptures, in which artists used over 9,500 cubic meters of special sand, extend over a surface of 4,000 square meters. Each sculptor uses 20 tons of sand and a big quantity of water.

Artists do not use regular sand, rather they have a special type of sand that secures the statues’ resistance against wind, aridity, and sun for a long time.

The “World of Sands” festival held in 2016 received around 300,000 visitors, and this year’s exhibition hopes “Marine Adventures” would attract more than 400,000 people. Admission tickets are sold for 8.5 euros for adults and 5 euros for children (5-11 years).