Wonder Reef

Wonder Reef is Australia's first buoyant artificial reef located approximately 2.5 kilometres offshore from Philip Park at Palm Beach on the Gold Coast, Queensland. Installed in 2021-2022 by the City of Gold Coast, it consists of nine large buoyant sculptural reef structures anchored to the seabed at about 30 metres depth. Designed to enhance marine biodiversity and provide a world-class dive site, it attracts divers and snorkellers to explore marine life and underwater sculptures.

Visitors access Wonder Reef only by commercial dive or snorkel boat from Gold Coast marinas. The site lies in open ocean with nine giant buoyant steel and concrete reef sculptures tethered above the seabed at around 30 metres depth, rising to about 8 metres below the surface. Visitors can expect clear ocean water, schools of fish, and marine growth colonising the structures. The experience is entirely water-based with no land access, platforms or beach, focused on scuba diving, freediving and snorkelling around the sculptures.

Commissioned by the City of Gold Coast as a tourism and marine habitat initiative, Wonder Reef was fabricated and installed in 2021-2022 and officially opened in June 2022. It was designed by Queensland artist Daniel Templeman and engineered as a buoyant reef system anchored to the seabed, representing a new approach to artificial reef creation in Australia to support marine ecology and dive tourism.