Aquarium on the horizon
Last week the founders of the award-winning Ocean Park aquarium announced their expression of interest to open a similar facility in the City of Karratha.
Father and son team Rick and Ed Fenny have spent the past 14 years developing the facility in Shark Bay from a small aquaculture centre to a conservation and marine park that attracts more than 70,000 tourists a year.
Ocean Park founder Rick Fenny said they would like to recreate a similar facility somewhere between Dampier and Cossack.
"We have a product we could bring to the region straight away, as long as we had some land, the challenge is to find a place where we can set this up," he said.
"We are currently working with the City and the Chamber of Commerce to see what's out there. We do need absolute waterfront, so somewhere like Cossack or Dampier could work almost straight away because there's infrastructure there already.
"A bit more ambitious would be to go to a totally virgin site on the Burrup Peninsula or somewhere like that … Ocean Park started its life as just a bit of barren coastal land with nothing there whatso-ever, so there's no reason why we couldn't replicate that again up here."
Co-founder Ed Fenny said an aquarium in Karratha would be a unique drawcard for tourism in the region.
"It's all very good having nice hotels and good places to stay but there has got to be some reason for people to drive into these areas … in the Pilbara you've got the Burrup Peninsula and the Dampier Archipelago right there, so what better place to really try to crank up tourism for people from not only the Pilbara and WA, but so Australians and international (visitors) can see what a remarkable area it is too," he said.
"At the end of the day it's fantastic not only for tourism but for the locals - there's enough local population to make it sustainable in its own right, people would drive from other towns, you could potentially attract the whole Pilbara here to visit.
"There's still obviously a huge number of hurdles to jump, the big one is to find an area suitable for development and to do that we need good council support to go ahead. That will be critical."
Karratha and Districts Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive John Lally said they were currently working with the Rick Fenny Group to find a suitable location.
"We would support proposals like this that support tourism in the region and foster economic diversification," he said. "This is an ideal project to do that, it's just a matter of finding a suitable location." Pilbara Regional Council chief executive Tony Friday said the PRC would throw whatever weight was needed behind the Rick Fenny Group to get an Ocean Park aquarium established in the Pilbara.
"I think it aligns very well with our vision for the tourism industry in the Pilbara, particularly because it's an operator that's offering a unique product for the region," he said.
"It's not just about the quantity of tourism products; it's about diversity as well. No one wants to travel through a region and do the same thing over and over again in a different location, and what better example of economic diversification is there than an operator of the tourism sector offering an attraction currently not serviced at all by the region.
"How fantastic is that, it's a perfect fit."
