Latest news
EcoReef Centre planned for Queensland coast
Cairns-based Sunlover Cruises has revealed a proposal to build a 3,900sq metre pontoon, provisionally named the EcoReef Centre, to be moored off the Great Barrier Reef.
Facilities aboard will include an underwater café, health spa, conference centre, reef research laboratory and an Aboriginal gallery. Tourist attractions such as scuba diving, seawalking, a pool for children, a water slide, limited accommodation and a wedding chapel will also be provided.
Designed to look like an island and adjacent to a site currently occupied by a smaller pontoon also owned by the company, Sunlover says the 2,000-tonne structure will be a maximum of 15m high, not visible from any easily accessible point on the mainland and have no discernable impact on the ecology of the reef.
It will also be totally self-contained and operate on wind and solar generated power.
Sunlover currently carries over 100,000 visitors to the reef every year and the company hopes to open up the experience to a much larger number of people, including the elderly and physically handicapped.
Permission to proceed with the project, which would be accessed by high-speed catamarans from Cairns and Palm Cove, has to be granted by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority. Sunlover also has to obtain final board approval from its parent company, NYK. If construction goes ahead as planned, the facility should open towards the end of 2004.
Nick Ohnishi, Sunlover ceo and NYK's Australian representative, said both companies were very aware that they were running a tourist operation in an area with some of the strictest environmental regulations on earth and the EcoReef project would be developed along 'world's best practise guidelines'. Details: www.sunlover.com.au