Sparkling in the tropical waters 48 kilometres east of Cairns in northern Queensland, Moore reef is home to staghorn corals, wrasse, parrotfish, sea slugs and grey reef sharks. And if plans before the Queensland government go through, it could also see its first wedding chapel by the end of next year.
The EcoReef proposal by the dive operator Sunlover Cruises would involve building a floating island the size of a football pitch in the placid waters of the Moore reef lagoon in the Great Barrier Reef.
The pontoon, moored in 20 metres of water, would be covered in artificial rock and would include a three-storey visitors’ centre inside a hill at one end.
It would hold shops, classrooms, an underwater cafe, a children’s play area and accommodation. The wedding chapel is understood to be for the benefit of east Asian tourists, who make up around two-thirds of visitors to Queensland.
”It’s a really tacky proposal and it would probably open the door for a whole lot of other nasty developments in the world heritage area,” said John Rainbird, coordinator of the Cairns and Far North Environmental Centre. He is raising money to launch a legal bid to stop the proposal.
”We wouldn’t be allowed to build this if the environmental case wasn’t watertight,” said Sunlover’s managing director, Terry Russell.
Sunlover has been operating a small pontoon 100 metres from the proposed site since 1991. However, that platform is only an eighth of the size of the planned structure, and has room for only 310 visitors at a time. The new pontoon would hold at least 800, ferried out in under an hour by high-speed catamarans from Cairns.
Only five platforms are allowed in the Cairns area, and the EcoReef would be by far the biggest. Environmentalists fear it could spark a trend for larger, more commercialised reef centres. ”A lot of other operators will want to jump on the bandwagon if this gets through,” said Rainbird. – Guardian Unlimited Â