Showering with fish? RRU researchers the first to study underwater hotels
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It wasn’t so much what Prof. Phillip Vannini saw during his recent trip to the Maldives – but what saw him – that made a lasting impression.
“You haven’t had a shower until you’ve had a shower with a fish staring at you,” says the School of Communication and Culture ethnographic researcher and filmmaker. "You know, when a parrot fish stares at you for about an hour, you start asking questions that you've never asked yourself before."
Uncharted waters
Phillip and April Vannini’s latest research project, Life in (and beyond) underwater hotels, takes a deep dive into questions never before asked by social scientists; it’s the first empirical research ever conducted in an underwater hospitality environment.
"The issue that we’re trying to focus on is the ability of architects, through imaginative architecture, to confront us with questions about where we can live as humans." -Phillip Vannini
“From the very beginning, this project was not so much about hotels so to speak, but about if we are a terrestrial species. Could we live somewhere else?” he says.
Those questions became quite evident on their first trip to Singapore’s Equarius Hotel.
“Singapore is one of the most densely populated places in the world. They have run out of space. And they are now asking themselves, how can we utilize the space underwater to do other things?
“I think our place as social scientists is to provide an early understanding of how these things are done but also how these things should be done so that they’re sustainable in the long run.”
A different way of life
The Gabriola Island residents say that being surrounded by water has made them intensely aware of the threat of rising sea levels.
Nowhere was that feeling more acutely shared than when they were doing research in the Maldives, Phillip says.
The Muraka on Conrad Maldives Rangali Island is the world's first underwater villa.
With the vast majority of the Maldivian Archipelago less than two meters above sea level, the Maldives is particularly vulnerable to increasing sea levels – forcing people there to reinvent their way of life, he says. In fact, construction of its first floating city is underway now and expected to be completed by 2027.
There are eight underwater hotels in the world and in addition to the Equarius and The Muraka on Conrad Maldives Rangali Island, the Vanninis have also visited Tanzania’s Manta Resort. They hope to visit Dubai’s Atlantis the Palm soon.
“Every experience is really different and it forces you to confront different things,” Phillip says.
“It’s one thing to be inside an aquarium where there are captive fish,” he says of his Singapore experience. “It’s another to be in an environment like Tanzania where the underwater room has worked as a platform to introduce pretty radical environmental policies to the area that have resulted in meaningful conservation.”
The Manta underwater room is located off Pemba Island, part of Tanzania's Zanzibar Archipelago.
Enchanting encounters
Each of their experiences led the Vanninis to discover — and relate — to underwater environments in ways they never had before.
“In the Maldives, it was coral,” Phillip says, admitting he hadn’t previously given much thought to the tiny animal species.
Coral is not only crucial for underwater ecosystems, but it also protects coastlines from erosion and supports livelihoods through fishing and tourism.
“As a species, we depend on coral and if coral is dead, we’re all gone,” Phillip says.
In Tanzania, the Vanninis were even introduced by the resort owner — a Swede by the name of Matthew Saus — to a fish named Nick. Nick was like a regular hotel guest, only he lived and slept outside of the room.
"I don’t have a pet but people who do tell me they care about their pets. I care about a trumpet fish named Nick." Phillip Vannini
“Trumpet fish are not the prettiest things in the world, but they are just incredibly fixated with you. They just stare at you for hours and you can’t get away from their gaze,” he says.
Vannini says he noticed that he started to relate to Nick not unlike people do with pets.
“That level of enchantment you develop leads to care, and if it leads to care, then it leads to this feeling that we can do good in the universe,” he says. “I really do believe that that kind of tourism, if well done, has the potential to teach and to be incredibly enlightening.”
The Vanninis will soon release a series of episodes on Shelter, an architectural film streaming service. Check out their first academic journal article, From heterotopia to alloútopia: more-than-human geographies of Singapore’s underwater Equarius Hotel.
Research projects were funded in part by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.