Mieni had served Animalia well as its oldest colony and as major tourist site, largely because of its place in the Pacific. And while it wasn't impossibly far from the atolls where the US conducted its nuclear tests in the years after WWII, scientists had also long declared the water safe, and thus that tourist option had drawn a lot of people to come visit the atoll. Some of it was for some of the history, counting Japan's occupation of the atoll during WWII and a US battleship ultimately sunk just off the atoll after the war in connection with the atomic bomb tests. Some of it was simply because it was a Pacific Island with a coral reef around some of the islands of the atoll and made for good swimming. Some of it came from scientists looking to study the sea turtles that used one of the exterior beaches as a nesting site.
The biggest thing that drew tourists were the Animalians that lived there. It was something that came in very odd ways on how so many Humans seemed to look on Animalians. People liked to come see them, and to some Animalians, there was the thought that some of the tourism that came to Animalia's colonies was that one of the Animalian residents would fall for them, and Kirana had noted that some of that had gone on with her friends Teela and Topanga. These interactions weren't necessarily harsh or rude, but from what Kirana had been told, it also became clear that personality-wise, the tourists that tried to court them wouldn't fit well with them. Though, of late, the colony had also been looking at needed expansion, largely because so many new Animalians that had come from ocean environments had come to Mieni and because they'd gotten a few people that wanted to become sea based Animalians that had also come. It represented something that the small atoll really couldn't handle, at least not in the long term.
This had in turn brought about many questions over what to do. Normally Ran and Gaz were Mieni's "governors," and had largely been agreed on as such with no one really challenging them. Some might have put it as fear of them, given that they were Great White Shark Animalians, and thus represented an apex predator that really only had to worry about Orcas, but they had managed the main hotel well and had allowed for a fairly stable "council" that voted on matters in an informal way regarding how Mieni would be "governed." And while the colony's population was low, that worked out fine, but with the upturn in those sending in requests to move to Mieni, that then brought about new needs for the colony, and namely living space that wouldn't take things away from the hotel space needed for the colony's tourist businesses to survive. And in the last meeting, there had been an idea on what to do about that...
The plan was to bring in an old cruise liner that one of the cruise companies felt was reaching the end of its operational life as a cruise ship and to then anchor it off one of the northern islands on the atoll, so that it wouldn't be messing with the tourist operations that mainly operated on the southern and western islands of the atoll. There was even talk of building a platform that the ship might sit on to limit its exposure to the sea, and thus potential corrosion, but that wasn't going to go forward until they had more information on how the cruise ship would be handled. The one "problem" was ultimately that Ran and Gaz asked Harold to look over the blueprints to the ship in question that was to be used for the project. Harold accepted it, but with a reminder that he wasn't an architect or engineer by trade, though he was soon reminded that with his experience in the Human world, he might have some ideas and suggestions that Ran and Gaz and many of the other Animalians that lived on Mieni, who were uplifted Animalians, didn't have.
"So, this will be like the ships that all come to us during the tourist season?" Kirana asked as she and Harold sat and looked over the blueprints that were laid out over a table in the Horizon Labs office.
"Just about all cruise ships will have that base layout with cabins for people to stay in and with restaurants for them to eat at," Harold nodded as he looked over the paperwork, "that isn't a problem in and of itself. The real question will relate to handling things like laundry, individual cooking, and things like that."
"Oh?" Kirana wondered as she looked over Harold's shoulder at the line of rectangles that made up the rooms on the deck that Harold was looking at.
"Yes, as you know, the ships aren't intended for long term living," Harold answered, "they sail out of a base and return there after a cruise. From there, things are then cleaned when tourists disembark. This apartment ship we'd be converting this ship into would need something more permanent for things like laundry cooking, and so on. We'd also need ways to remove and handle things like waste and garbage."
"Some of that would probably be handled the same way we handle things like that for the hotels and so on," Kirana commented and followed Harold as he nodded.
Harold nodded as that made sense, "though because we'd be having it stay here, we'd also need to arrange for it to have those services to remove garbage and sewage on a fairly regular basis or keep the ship seaworthy so that it can sail to port facilities that would handle that for the ship."
"They'd have to do that?" Kirana asked.
"I'm only guessing," Harold then spoke, "I'm not an engineer or architect. I'm more of a scientist and geneticist, which has helped with Horizon's projects more than anything else. So, engineering a ship would be difficult... or at least difficult for me."
"And the floors?" Kirana wondered.
"With trying to convert a pre-existing ship into residences," Harold said slowly, "not without rebuilding a whole new ship."
Kirana nodded and looked at the images that fitted the various levels that filled out the various levels of the ship. From what she could see, many of the rooms didn't look to be that much bigger than the hotel rooms that Mieni had. The rooms that were larger on the cruise ship's blueprints were either restaurants, gyms, or other amenities that were for people to relax on as part of their standard vacations. If Harold was right and they couldn't redo the floors and levels without totally redoing the interior and thus essentially needing to scrap the blueprints as they were, it might require some size limits for the Animalians that were to move in, but then for the most part, unless there ended up being a lot of people that really wanted to become some of the larger whale species, which could happen given that Dinotopia Aquatica had a Tylosaurus and an Elasmosaurus Dinotopian, they wouldn't have too much to worry about.
"What would you think on the engine space?" Kirana asked to Harold noting the spaces on the lower levels of the ship that were devoted to the shi['s engines and machinery, "if the cruise ship is to become stationary... do we need it?"
"If it stays IN water, it may need periodic cleaning and maintenance on its hull," Harold commented, "just as the submarine we use for acquiring animals from the deep for uplifting. And while we have the facilities to dock here at Mieni... we don't have the harbor facilities to clean and maintain the hull of these sorts of ships. In this, we'd either need to build a massive platform that could both bridge the islets here on the atoll but also hold up the ship... and that would probably be near impossible, particularly if one is looking for more "natural" sorts of views."
"And if we don't find a way to keep the ship out of water?" Kirana asked.
"We'd need to keep its engines and machinery so that it could sail to a more appropriate harbor for regular maintenance," Harold answered, "though... that could make for a vacation for Mieni's residents as well... or at least those that would move into the ship that is donated."
"How long would all of this take?" Kirana then asked.
"To repurpose the ship to handle laundry needs and so on?" Harold asked back, "I'd think it'd take at least a year to get absolutely everything done... from building a dock for the ship and repurposing certain floors on the ship to be laundromats... and that's assuming that the ship would be kept in condition to sail. If they build a specialized pier that would hold the ship out of the water, that will take even LONGER in order to make sure that the water corrode the ship or the stand it's put on. That's a lot of work to do."
Kirana said nothing for a moment.
"But again... a lot of this would be something that would be better suited to someone who is an architect or an engineer, which I am not," Harold sighed and then tapped a scaled hand on Kirana's hands as she touched his shoulders.