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Assessment whether Reef Check is adequately representing the important suite of species with socioeconomic value to the tourism industry.
[Final Report]
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Claire Standley (claire.standley@seh.oxon.ac.uk)
MSc in Biodiversity, Conservation and Management
Centre for the Environment
Oxford UniversityAbstract
Images from the Field The relationship between tourism, biodiversity and coral reef management will be investigated, with the Buccoo Reef Marine Park as a case study.
The project hopes to discover what species attract tourists to dive or snorkel at particular sites, through the use of a ranking system validated by expert witnesses (such as scientists familiar with the area and tour operators) as well as the tourists themselves.
This ranking system will be used to develop an index which represents a site’s ‘attractiveness’ to tourists. At the same time, it will be investigated whether these sites are considered ‘healthy’, by applying a standard rapid assessment protocol developed by the Reef Check group. A comparison of the two indices at any given site will allow an assessment of whether Reef Check is adequately representing an important suite of species: those with socioeconomic value to the tourism industry.
At the same time, the variety of sites surveyed may also provide important information for the management of the park; currently, the tourism industry of the Buccoo Reef Marine Park (which mainly consists of snorkellers and glass-bottom boat tours) focuses almost exclusively on a few heavily visited sites. Less utilised locations will also be surveyed; if it is found that some of these other reef areas possess a high index value in terms of the species tourists want to see, it might be possible to fix moorings in these regions and encourage operators to diversity their itinerary towards these sites, thus diffusing visitor pressure within the park. This represents the applicability of this type of inter-disciplinary research.
