Excited to be delivering this talk next week as part of the IMCC3 scientific program in Glasgow: The current state of shark dive tourism: A powerful lever for conservation or an accident waiting to happen? Abstract: A strategy increasingly employed by shark conservationists is leveraging the argument for protecting sharks as a basis for attracting dive tourism revenue over the lifetime of a shark versus the one-time utilization value of a fished shark sold for its meat or fins. The dive tourism industry is seeing a resultant surge in shark diving, a lucrative and rapidly growing segment of adventure tourism. Many shark dive operations ensure successful viewing by aggregating sharks through feeding. Initial research has suggested provisioning does not negatively alter shark behavior. But is the practice inconsistent to decades of terrestrial observational data of the behavioral repercussions for wildlife and human interactions as a result of provisioning. And are dive operations selected for studies representative of the industry as a whole? The intention of shark tourism appears to be an effort to shift public perception of sharks from “man-eaters” to “ charismatic wildlife. Has the urgency for shark conservation (or the allure of a marketable tourism product) gotten ahead of sound science? Through an overview of global shark tourism, demographics, emerging best practices, and socioeconomic meta-analysis, we hope to drive a discussion within the conservation and dive tourism community on how, and at what costs, we are framing shark conservation.
Posted on: Fri, 08 Aug 2014 19:41:58 +0000
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