As a preliminary to this book, it is important for me to identify for the reader my paradigm of the marine environment. All writers are inevitably influenced by their experiences and training, and I am no exception. I am unashamedly a marine conservation advocate. It is obvious to me that the future health of our planet and all things that live on it is totally dependent on the sea. That is to say, the health of our world’s oceans is critical to the health of our planet. What concerns me, therefore, when looking at the rapid growth of tourism based upon marine resources is the impacts of those tourists’ activities and the associated infrastructural developments.
I am strongly influenced by writers such as Sylvia Earle, who expresses the critical importance of our marine environments so well:
It doesn’t matter where on Earth you live, everyone is utterly dependent on the existence of that lovely, living saltwater soup. There’s plenty of water in the universe without life, but nowhere is there life without water…
The living ocean drives planetary chemistry, governs climate and weather, and otherwise provides the cornerstone of the life-support system for all creatures on our planet, from deep sea starfish to desert sagebrush. That’s why the ocean matters. If the sea is sick, we’ll feel it. If it dies, we die. Our future and the state of the oceans are one.
But soon I had to face the evidence: the blue waters of the open sea appeared to be, most of the time, a discouraging desert. Like deserts on land, it was far from dead, but the live ingredient, plankton, was thinly spread, like haze, barely visible and monotonous. Then, exceptionally, areas turned into meeting places; close to shores and reefs, around floating weeds or wrecks, fish would gather and make a spectacular display of vitality and beauty…
The ‘oasis theory’ was to help me to understand that the ocean, huge as it may be when measured at human scale, is a very thin layer of water covering most of our planet—a very small world in fact—extremely fragile and at our mercy.
(Cousteau, 1985:12)
The oceans of our planet are, therefore, not the vast, endless resource that many humans still perceive them to be. Despite the fact that nearly 70 per cent of our planet is covered by ocean, only small portions of this area form the basis for most forms of marine life. I am often reminded of early European pioneering attitudes to land-based resources. Forests, animals (like the North American bison) and minerals were thought to be so plentiful that removing as many of them as we liked or needed would have little impact. We now understand that those attitudes were selfish, short-sighted and wrong. Unfortunately, we now appear to be making the same basic mistakes with marine resources.
Understanding these things is critical if one is to assess adequately the development and impacts of marine tourism and to design or advocate management strategies, as is suggested in the subtitle to this book. My view is, therefore, decidedly conservation oriented, for I cannot see the marine world from any other perspective. My view is also solution oriented, for I care about our oceans and the creatures that live within them; consequently I am motivated to try and find solutions to the negative impacts that are caused by humans and their activities. The fact that my glasses are not rose-coloured but marine blue has undeniably influenced this work. I flag that so that the reader understands this bias. I believe it to be understandable, defensible and even desirable; however, I do recognise that others have a different world view and consequently will have a different slant on this topic.
My hope is that through visiting and enjoying the marine environment as tourists, many people will come to view the oceans as worthy of protection. Perhaps in the same way as tourism is now used as a legitimate justification for the protection of land-based resources (as when such resources are protected in a national park), we will see more marine conservation advocates and marine parks. This hope may be somewhat naive, for the rapid and widespread development of marine-based tourism suggests that it may merely be another form of exploitation of marine resources rather than an agent for marine conservation. However, there are a number of examples where tourism has produced positive results for things marine. It can happen and has happened. This heartens me greatly, for if it can be done once it can be done again and again. This is the challenge that this book seeks to address.
Thus, I believe that the basis for analysing and managing marine recreational activities, including tourism, must be ensuring the sustainability of the resource upon which depend, not only the recreation, but the health of all living things. This may seem to be somewhat of an over-reaction. The sea is vast and by far the great majority of marine-based tourism occurs in but a small portion of that vastness. How then can recreational activities in the sea threaten the survival of the planet? This question is addressed in a reflection from one of the best-known of ocean explorers, Jacques Cousteau: