The brainchild of local visionaries Professor Nigel Forteath, Col Ward and Bill Morris, Seahorse World took out the Tasmanian Tourism Award for best significant regional tourism attraction at last week's annual tourism awards ceremony in Hobart.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Seahorse World evolved out of Seahorse Australia, a development to breed and export seahorses.
Prof. Forteath, Mr Morris and Mr Ward left Seahorse Australia and sought investment partners in the development to effectively display Tasmania's species of seahorses and seadragons.
"People used to knock on the door of the seahorse farm and ask to look around. We used to show them through for a $1 each. We knew there was a market for the Seahorse World concept," Mr Morris said.
Now, you can tour the attraction for $15, daily from 9.30am.
The general manager of Seahorse World, Georgina Wylde said: "It's almost three years to the day that we started with 15 local shareholders.
"Visitors are up 25 per cent, we are on the cover of the new 63 telephone book, we have been granted a $30,000 regional tourism grant and now this award."
Mr Morris said: "We started out trying to get 30,000 visitors in our first year and recorded 50,000.
"Now, we have won this award from our peers and we know we are more than capable.
"All our employees are from down this end of the Tamar River and we get about 18 per cent of all visitors to Launceston - we are aiming at 70,000 visitors next year."
