beds (known dugong feeding habitat) on the
east of the island. There are plans to build
boardwalks through the highly sensitive bird
roosting site just south of the island, and the
influx of dredging, boating and shipping traffic
will inundate the area with discharge, noise,
emissions, ballast water that often contains
invasive or harmful foreign organisms,
sulphur-laden ship fumes and much more.
Once you study similar ports around the
world, and add up the inevitable outcomes of
this proposal, the environment and ecology
here doesn’t stand a chance.
THE SHIPS
The latest claim is that ships as big as they
make them can safely come in and out to
Wavebreak Island - but again the public are
not allowed to scrutinise the simulations,
instead told to accept them. There have
been two previous studies done using the
world’s best simulation equipment, and
both of those studies (each of which were
far more extensive than the latest ASF/
AECOM one) exposed serious flaws in the
concept, with many failed runs, or runs
conducted in near impossible scenarios that
omit critical weather statistics known to be
common here. The last report from council
had the operators essentially predict that if
you have no north, northwest or northeast
winds at all, a smooth slow and single
speed current, a single direction continuous
small swell with no sets or pulses, no seas,
and no gusts, you can actually navigate a
small proportion of the world’s fleet into the
seaway - that’s not to say that it still wasn’t
ridiculously risky anyway. Conditions like this
have never occurred at the seaway, ever.
The theme has so far been to underscore the
data used and to ignore serious and known
weather and environmental factors such as
gusts, summer northerlies, swell peaks, seas
and the volatile two-speed current inside the
seaway. It seems for them it’s best to do a
small amount of runs which might boost the
chances of attaining some kind of success from
the simulators. Sadly this is not a video game,
and there are no cheat codes for Mother Nature.
This is a narrow entrance that is exposed to the
full force of the Pacific Ocean. Once dredged,
it will become a swell and tidal current funnel,
exposed to all elements of the weather - making
safe, regular and profitable schedules an
impossibility for cruise companies. Insurance
companies and underwriters are on edge after
the Costa Concordia tragedy, and have put
cruise companies on notice, reminding them
that foolish operation of billion dollar ships
near shallow and dangerous crossings will not
be covered - perhaps revealing why Carnival
have made Brisbane their ‘preferred’ new
destination and NOT the Gold Coast.