Tourism and Recreational Impacts

Recreational activities can harm coral reefs through:

• Breakage of coral colonies and tissue damage with direct contact such as walking, touching, kicking, standing, or gear contact that often happen with SCUBA, snorkelling, and trampling
• Breakage or overturning of coral colonies and tissue damage from negligent boat anchoring
• Changes in marine life behavior from feeding or harassment by humans
• Water pollution by tour boats through the discharge of fuel, human waste, and grey water
• Invasive species which can be spread through transportation of ballast water, hull fouling of cruise ships, and fouling from recreational boating
• Trash and debris deposited in the marine environment
• Spread of disease through ballast water and potentially diving gear

Scuba Divers stepping on corals. Photo © Mario Lutz/The Reef World Foundation

Management Strategies

Recreational users and commercial tourism operators play an important role in reef conservation and management and are often key partners with reef management agencies in efforts to protect coral reefs. Through a balanced approach focusing on sustainable use, recreational uses can be managed to minimize their impacts on coral reefs while strengthening the contributions of recreational users to reef management and the economy. Key approaches for managing recreation include setting limits, managing reef activities, and encouraging best practices.

Setting Limits

• Carrying capacity — One approach to preventing unacceptable impacts from human use is to set limits on numbers of users and types of activity based on the capacity of the ecosystem to cope with impacts. In practice, it can be difficult to determine environmental carrying capacity, but limits can be set using best available knowledge and an approach inclusive of reef users.
• Limits of acceptable change (LAC) — This involves setting limits based on reef users’ behavior and can be a powerful approach for getting users (especially commercial tourism operators) to adopt best practices, as the numbers of users is dependent on the size of their ecological footprint. A key requirement of an LAC approach is a system for regularly monitoring reef condition as part of a dynamic management system with thresholds and actions.

Managing Reef Activities

Reef activities may be managed through regulation and/or a permit system, enforcement can occur through a combination of self-regulation, spot-checks, and surveillance. Installation of mooring buoys and associated education campaigns can reduce the amount of anchoring. Reduced shore-based infrastructure, such as limited vessel berths or car parking at boat launch sites, can help control the amount of boat traffic around a reef. User-pays systems, such as day passes, can be used to cap numbers of visitors to a site or disperse use to a wider area and reduce pressure on the most popular sites.

Temporary closures of reef sites can also be implemented at times where coral reefs are facing added pressures. These include for example, unusually warm periods or after severe storms when corals can be more susceptible to disease and other sources of mortality.

Encouraging Best Practices

The impacts of recreational activities can also be reduced through environmentally sensitive behavior. There are many sources of information on best practices for tourism that help to codify behaviors that reduce risks to reefs. These include the Responsible Reef Practices developed for the Great Barrier Reef and guidance provided by the Coral Reef Alliance and the Green Fins program.

Even for extractive recreational activities like fishing, impacts can be reduced through setting and enforcing bag and size limits, and by encouraging adoption of best practices. Adoption of best practices can be encouraged through systems of formal recognition such as eco-certification programs and eco-rating schemes.

The use of life jackets can help snorkelers maintain buoyancy and reduce harm to corals and other organisms. Photo © Jennifer Adler