A review of divers' responsible behaviour on diving sites and implication for marine tourism

Ahmad Puad, Mat Som and Khairul Amri, Hasim (2019) A review of divers' responsible behaviour on diving sites and implication for marine tourism. Middle-East Journal of Scientific Research, 27 (2). pp. 132-137. ISSN 1990-9233

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Abstract

The uniqueness of coral reef ecosystems has led to various tourism activities such as SCUBA diving. The popularity of scuba diving activity has indirectly improved the tourism industry making it a multibillion dollar industry. SCUBA diving tourism has become important in terms of magnitude and significantly contributes to social, economy and environment. Divers play an important role in marine conservation as their active diving activities may negatively impact coral reef ecosystems. Their presence may harm the sustainability of coral reefs as some of the divers may touch or smash the coral reefs. Nevertheless, in the absence of proper controls and enforcement, unplanned marine tourism growth has caused environmental degradation which undermines the long-term sustainability of the tourism industry. The purpose of this paper is to explore factors that contribute to SCUBA diving impacts on coral and fish communities. This paper explains the causes of a certain event, validating the problem of impacts, defining the core issues and identifies possible causes leading to an effect. The phenomenon of diving impacts on coral reefs is a result of intensive use of dive site over the long-term. The divers can reduce their impacts towards coral reefs through responsible diving underwater behaviors. The causes of cumulative divers’ contacts are more complicated than it seems. In response, this paper proposes the proper low impact SCUBA diving strategies that need to be considered for future sustainability of marine tourism management.

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