CORAL Releases Marine Tourism Business Standards
By Anonymous
The Coral Reef Alliance (CORAL) recently announced the release of their guide, “Voluntary Standards for Marine Recreation in the Mesoamerican Reef System.” This guide provides marine tourism businesses, bulk purchasers of visitor excursions and tourists with tested standards that will prevent recreational overuse and misuse of coral reefs, according to CORAL.
“These are the first set of marine tourism standards to apply to an entire region,” said CORAL program director Rick MacPherson. “The Mesoamerican Reef is a single ecosystem spanning four countries: Mexico, Belize, Guatemala and Honduras. CORAL involved every group that uses this reef in the creation of these standards and then field-tested their efficacy. These standards are affordable, attainable and effective.”
In areas of high-volume tourism, such as Mesoamerica, repeated direct contact with the reef poses an immediate threat.
Hundreds of boat groundings and hundreds of thousands of tourist interactions each year reduce sections of coral reef to rubble, according to CORAL.
Human contact with a reef also reduces coral’s resilience to other stressors, such as rising sea temperatures and diseases.
“Since our dive shop has been involved in the standards project, my staff has become more environmentally and safety conscious,” said Sergio Rivera, environmental manager for Scubacaribe (Punta Cana, Dominican Republic) in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. “Now we provide environmental briefings before every dive and equip every BCD [an inflatable diving jacket] with sound devices to ensure location of divers who get separated from the group.”
The standards provide detailed requirements for environmentally friendly and safety-conscious marine tourism businesses in the areas of diving, snorkeling and boating.
Hearing of CORAL’s success in Mesoamerica, government and business groups in Maui, Hawaii, have also engaged CORAL to develop similar standards.
Copyright Compass Publications, Inc. Jul 2007
(c) 2007 Sea Technology. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.