VMR Whitsunday will no longer monitor marine communications channels 81 and 82.

The two channels that have been in use by Whitsunday boaties for 20 years will be out of action for the foreseeable future, due to the aged equipment requiring maintenance and upgrades.

VMR Whitsunday's Tom Manning went to great lengths to raise the funding required to upgrade the iconic channel 81 and 82 repeaters but was unable to attract interest at a community, local, state or federal level.

VMR Whitsunday president Ray Lewis said while they no longer had any responsibility for the radio repeaters, there was hope they would be restored.

"Discussion with the Whitsunday Bareboat Operators Association and the Whitsunday Charter Boat Industry Association have been fruitful however, as the associations have agreed to take over the licences and repair the repeaters,” he said.

Whitsunday Bareboat Association president Trevor Rees said he would like to see work done to fix the channel 81 and 82 repeaters as soon as possible.

"We are certainly keen to get it going as soon as we can as there is certainly a (frequency) gap in the outer reef and once we get go- ahead from VMR that they no longer intend to use those repeaters we will get them repaired,” Mr Rees said.

In the meantime, VMR Whitsunday urges everyone on the water to subscribe to the emergency channel 16 and supplementary channel 67, which will be monitored instead on a 24-hour basis.

The VMR Whitsunday radio base will continue to operate on Saturday and Sunday from 7 am to 5pm and monitoring of these channels will still be monitored outside those hours.