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A 16-year-old looking to beef up his college application says he is responsible for putting a grand piano on a Biscayne Bay sandbar.
The marine patrol officers and fish and wildlife agents made an onshore visit Thursday to the home of one Nick Harrington, 16, to deliver an ultimatum: Remove the grand piano from Biscayne Bay within 24 hours or face felony charges, a $5,000 fine or, perhaps, worse.
“The officers asked me, ‘Should your mom get arrested? Or should you get arrested?’ ” Nick said. “I said: ‘Arrest me. It’s my piano.’ ”
The mystery that has gripped much of South Florida and head-scratching Web surfers everywhere for the past week — who dumped an old grand piano on a sandbar and why on earth would anyone do that? — has finally been solved.
The teenager had intended to make a “surreal video” of the piano perched atop the sandbar’s highest point, with Miami’s glittering skyline as a backdrop, to impress the college admissions officers at the Cooper Union in Manhattan, where he hopes to study art or music.
The video was never made, although Nick and his family took some pictures of him pretending to play it while the piano was on fire. Not long afterward, boaters discovered it, and for days people guessed about the back story of the “piano bar.”
The odyssey of the baby grand began five years ago when it was used by Nick’s father, J. Mark Harrington, a film and television production designer, for a shoot. It was then moved to the garage of Nick’s grandmother. He and his family ferried the old piano on his family’s 22-foot Open Fisherman to the sandbar.
Nick remained quiet until an independent filmmaking couple claimed credit on Wednesday for putting the piano there. Nick, figuring his college admissions idea would be second-guessed unless he came forward right away to claim credit, decided to go public and call the police.
“I never imagined this would become so big,” he said.
Within hours of the mystery being solved, the authorities informed the teenager that the piano amounts to litter and an eyesore and must be removed.
Dumping an object weighing more than 500 pounds is a third-degree felony in Florida, punishable by a maximum of five years in prison and a fine of up to $5,000. The grand piano weighs at least 650 pounds.
“The bottom line is this young man committed a felony by dumping the piano in the bay,” said Jorge Pino, a spokesman for the South Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, whose officers visited Nick along with representatives from the Miami-Dade marine patrol and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.
Mr. Pino said the authorities were approaching the situation with “leniency in mind,” because of the boy’s age. “We understand the kid’s desire to express his artistic point of view,” he said. “And that is O.K. But he has to be very careful not to violate the law the next time he does so.”
The seed for the idea was planted last autumn when Nick’s adviser at MAST Academy, Ariel Diaz-Escanaverino, urged him to come up with a creative idea that would set him apart from other students applying for college.
“He wanted to do something artistic,” Mr. Diaz-Escanaverino said.
Nick said he immediately thought of the piano. So last Christmas, he and his father transported it from his grandmother’s house to the family’s house by boat, down a canal. On New Year’s Eve, at a party attended by about 100 people, the revelers decided to light the piano on fire. “We filled it with gasoline,” he said, “and threw sparklers at it.”
On Jan. 2, Nick, his brother, Andrew, his father and a neighbor carted the piano to the family boat and ran it out to the sandbar. Nick had wanted to shoot a video that included a pianist, a bagpipe player and a guitarist.
Instead, they lighted the piano on fire for the second time in three days. A series of photos were taken of Nick pretending to play the blazing piano.
After the visit by the authorities by Thursday, the Harrington family and their friends began making arrangements to pull the piano from the bay. But a salvage company hired by an unidentified person later said it had removed the piano. The Harringtons, who say they hope they can find a home for the piano, perhaps in a museum, want it back, Mr. Diaz-Escanaverino said.
Nick’s mother, Annabel said she liked it much better when the piano’s origin was a mystery.
“It just became so magical, and took on such a powerful energy — this wonderment of how it got there,” she said. “At first, people just saw it for what it was, and no one saw it as something polluting the bay.”
Nick said he hoped the experience would enhance his college applications but admitted that he was not sure. “It can be seen as a positive, artsy thing, or it can be seen as an irresponsible thing,” he said. “I would hate it if it became that. For that reason, I’m glad the piano is going away. Since it’s no longer a mystery, it will now just be a memory.”
