Museum of Underwater Art - Ocean Siren on Townsville's Strand

Another project recently completed for the Museum of Underwater Art (MOUA) is the “Ocean Siren”.

From the MOUA website:

The inaugural sculpture in the Southern Hemisphere’s first Museum of Underwater Art, the 'Ocean Siren' is installed alongside North Queensland’s iconic Strand Jetty in Townsville.

'Ocean Siren' is modelled on local Wulgurukaba Traditional Owner Takoda Johnson, with a vision to inspire reef and ocean conservation action and achieve positive environmental outcomes.

The ‘Ocean Siren’ reacts to live water temperature data from the Davies Reef weather station on the Great Barrier Reef and changes colour in response to live variations in water temperature.

https://www.moua.com.au/locations/ocean-siren/

PMG’s involvement in this project was to design, fabricate, paint and drive a 900mm diameter pile 30m off an existing jetty. This was done using our PMG183W barge with a 150T crawler crane onboard. After the pile was driven, we installed a pilecap and awaited delivery of the sculpture a few months later. Once the sculpture was delivered, we took possession, delivered to the jobsite on the back deck of our tug “Black Panther”, lifted it into position atop the pile using our PMG121 barge and an 80T crawler crane, and bolted everything into position. We then assisted with running the necessary cables across the seabed from the jetty and concrete protected and buried them, then assisted relevant specialist parties with the commissioning.

As was the case with the Coral Greenhouse project as John Brewer Reef, this project required significant liaison with many project stakeholders including GBRMPA, the MOUA board, Townsville Enterprise, Reef Ecologic, Townsville City Council, Port of Townsville Limited, AIMS, Maritime Safety Qld, HME Consulting Engineers, Consolidated Plastics, Minelec, Bluebottle and of course Jason deCaires Taylor and his very talented team

As can be seen in these photos, the Ocean Siren is quite spectacular, and is sure to be a feature on Townsville’s Strand for decades to come.