KEY POINTS:
A south Auckland company that has created the world's first all-acrylic undersea restaurant in the Maldives Islands in the Indian Ocean says a similar submarine tourism property could be launched here but only under very specific conditions.
Design consultancy M. J. Murphy, based in Manurewa, designed and built the 175 tonne restaurant called Ithaa (Pearl) in Singapore and had it delivered by giant barge to the Hilton Maldives Resort and Spa where it was positioned five metres below the waves, within a coral reef.
Diners enjoy the restaurant's feature 25-course dinner surrounded by tropical fish and encased within clear 110mm thick acrylic walls offering 270 degrees of panoramic underwater scenery.
The 5m by 9m transparent arch spans the entire dining room and seats 14 people. It was part of a US$25 million (NZ$36 million) re-build of Rangalifinolhu Island, one of the twin islands that make up Hilton Maldives Resort & Spa.
M. J. Murphy's managing director Mike Murphy says there is no reason why a similar restaurant could not be built in New Zealand's coastal waters or even in clear lakes where trout, eels and diving birds could be attracted by regular feeding to coincide with restaurant mealtimes. However, more likely locations would be within the protected waters of coral reefs in Australia, Fiji, the Cook Islands, Tahiti and other Pacific islands.
"The ideal place would have to be similar to the Maldives site. It must have beautiful clear water and something stunning to look at, like a coral or rocky seascape with lots of fish swimming around. The site must be protected from storms, high waves or storm surges, so behind a coral reef or a breakwater sea wall is ideal. A low tidal range is preferable with only 1-2 metres between low tide and high tide and the site should have good strong soil conditions on the seabed to allow for support piles to be embedded in safely."
Murphy says the optimum depth to seabed for an underwater restaurant is 7m to 10m and the preferred maximum design depth of water over top of acrylic arches 2.5m to 3m. "A great advantage would be having a proficient structural steelwork fabrication factory nearby, to avoid the expensive shipping of the completed restaurant unit for a long distance to the site.
"We looked at building the Maldives unit on an adjacent beach and floating it to the final site, but the extra difficulties of accurate steel fabrication, handling and painting proved too much."
Murphy says another important ingredient for an underwater restaurant in New Zealand would be its location in popular tourism areas like "Northland, Bay of Islands, Bay of Plenty, Queenstown and Lake Taupo where people have lots of money to spend and where there is a concentration of hotels" although the restaurant in the Maldives had become a tourist drawcard in its own right. "The most spectacular and best locations are in the sea, within coral reefs, where you can attract big fish like sharks, sting rays and barracuda. Big fish give the scene a real 'wow' factor."
Last month, the company had an inquiry about building an undersea restaurant in Cancun, Mexico, which has beautiful clear waters and great diving, but Murphy turned it down due to the high risk of hurricanes and big storm surges. "It was suggested we could locate one in Mangonui in Northland but the water clarity isn't consistent enough, especially after heavy rains, which send silty stormwater into the inlet, clouding everything up.
"A famous marine reserve diving area like the Poor Knights Islands might seem ideal but even in the unlikely event of getting permission to build there, the practicalities of building and operating a restaurant that far from the mainland, would make the project totally unfeasible."
Murphy also noted that scuba divers didn't need an underwater restaurant to experience the beauties of the ocean floor and its sea life, even if they could afford the US$200 plus (NZ$288) meal ticket for a 25-course meal. "Goat Island is also a lovely marine reserve in Northland, but it would probably strike similar problems."
Murphy said the Maldives site worked well because of the high class resort infrastructure built around the restaurant."People who patronise it are very well off. They expect quality and don't mind paying for it."
Murphy says his clients in the Maldives, the Crown Company and Hilton Maldives Resort and Spa, had been clever enough to realise that, even if the underwater restaurant didn't break even as soon as they would like, the important thing was that it was attracting more visitors to the resort and so the whole island infrastructure benefited.
"The pulling power of this new restaurant and the publicity it has generated has been amazing."
The undersea restaurant has been a highlight of Murphy's career.
The project was placed in the top three places in the Engineering Innovator of the Year category in the NZ Engineering Excellence Awards 2006, sponsored by the Institution of Professional Engineers New Zealand (IPENZ).
Murphy says he's been fortunate in being able to draw on the services of several skilled Kiwis including a very good design technician, Brian Goss, based in Wellington, who has worked on the Maldives project and several aquarium projects with him. "There are very few people in the world who are experienced in major aquarium or acrylic tunnel design."
"For the huge Palma Aquarium in Mallorca, Spain, which is still under construction, I designed and detailed the huge 3500 sq m concrete shark tank, the complex underground filter tanks, and 10 of the fish tanks which are each the size of an average lounge, with the close liaison of the client's onsite engineer, another good Kiwi, Mike Sloane.
Mike and I have had a long history together, having both worked on the Manly Aquarium in Sydney, the Sentosa Underwater World Aquarium in Singapore, and the large aquarium at Maui Ocean Centre, Hawaii."
