The impacts of climate change on coral reef communities,critical for the dive tourism sector,have received significant,these seem to have had rather little effect on the related tourism industries, despite widespread publicity.Even in destinations where the reefs are nominally the key attraction,most tourists spend relatively little of their time and money actually diving and snorkelling. Experienced divers spend more of their time at depth,where bleaching effects rarely reach; inexperienced divers and snorkellers have little standard of comparison. Many divers and snorkellers are more interested in fish than in corals,and many of the more colourful reef fish species thrive perfectly well on bleached reefs. Tourists continue to visit coral reefs damaged by pollution or heavy visitor pressure,and it seems that they also continue to visit reefs damaged by bleaching.
To date,however,climate-related coral damage has been relatively minor. It is possible that storms and rising sea levels may change the increased carbon dioxide concentrations will cause widespread ocean acidification,leading to replacement of calcareous corals by algae and other organisms which are less attractive for tourism (Hoegh-Guldberg et al.,2007). There have been periods in the geological past when vertical growth of coral reefs has been unable to keep pace with the rising sea levels, so-called reef drowning, and this may well happen again under anthropogenic climate change.