Tourism Industry
Divers are an important part of the tourism industry. Photo © Wolcott Henry 2005/Marine Photobank
The tourism industry can provide both potential threats and opportunities when it comes to spawning aggregations and their management. Sport divers and sport fishers are generally interested in the protection of reefs, and tourism industries are hugely dependent on healthy reef ecosystems.
Some effective ways to engage the tourism industry in FSA protection include:
- Establishing user fees that directly support marine protected area management, including FSA sites
- Engaging and training fishers as tour guides and boatmen as an alternative livelihood
- Providing educational materials to tourism industries and, for example, dive magazines on the vulnerability of FSAs to fishing, the unknowns of dive tourism on FSAs, and the need for conservation.
In many parts of the world, divers and tourists are not attracted to FSAs themselves, but to the large fish that frequent the nearby areas. Therefore, it is not necessary, and is discouraged, to develop a tourism industry around an FSA. Conserving some types of FSAs will have the effect of conserving the largest individuals of a population, and these individuals attract tourists. For example, in Hol Chan, Belize, tourists are drawn to the large groupers and enormous schools of fish that are commonly seen in the area. Although FSAs are located nearby, these remain undisturbed by tourists.