[Coral-List] Fwd: Australia’s first underwater hotel

[Nathan Cook]

The underwater hotel is part of the Hard Reef 'ReefWorld' Pontoon that has been in the same location for many years. The floating pontoon installation was recently revamped and renovated following a cat 4 cyclone in 2017. The 'hotel' forms part of the pontoon which is a tourist destination for day visitors coming to snorkel and overnight visitors as part of the Reef Sleep and Reef Suites experience and requires extensive permit applications to allow these activities. 

The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park maintains numerous policies, plans and procedures for managing and permitting all activities in the marine park. https://www.gbrmpa.gov.au/about-us/legislation-regulations-and-policies/policies-and-position-statements . These permissions are extremely and rigorous and due to the fact that this installation has been in this location for a couple of decades (not sure exactly), the introduction of a couple of underwater rooms to an already present installation is unlikely to have any negative impact beyond what is already present. 



-----Original Message-----
From: Coral-List <coral-list-bounces at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> On Behalf Of Sarah Frias-Torres via Coral-List
Sent: Thursday, 17 February 2022 3:59 AM
To: coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov; Hayley Henderson <hayleyrhenderson at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Coral-List] Fwd: Australia’s first underwater hotel

Hayley
I would like to see the Environmental Impact Study for this underwater hotel.
Assuming here that the Australian government requires, by law, such a study.


<><...<><...<><...

Sarah Frias-Torres, Ph.D.
Twitter: @GrouperDoc
Science Blog: https://grouperluna.com/
Art Blog: https://oceanbestiary.com/


________________________________
From: Coral-List <coral-list-bounces at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> on behalf of Hayley Henderson via Coral-List <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>
Sent: Wednesday, February 16, 2022 12:23 PM
To: coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>
Subject: [Coral-List] Fwd: Australia’s first underwater hotel

Hello listers,

Maybe you’ve heard the news already, maybe this is old news discussed before I signed up for the list, but maybe the news that Australia now has ReefSuites, an underwater hotel outside the Great Barrier Reef, is news to you.

Have any of you heard of this before? Know of any environmental impact studies done? Have anything to say on how this might affect environmental science communication, positively or negatively? How it might impact the environment there, positively or negatively? I wonder myself how the tourist attraction might impact wildlife there and hurt resources, but might also make people feel the need to take action to preserve reefs and other marine environments for the future. Might be a double-edged sword.

Condé Nest’s twitter post about ReefSuites:
https://twitter.com/i/events/1493578900210962438?s=21


All the best,
Hayley Henderson (she/her)
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