Conservation and Education Benefits of Interpretation on Marine Wildlife Tours

Abstract

Marine wildlife tourism can provide a range of education and conservation benefits for visitors. These benefits derive from close personal encounters with marine wildlife and visitor learning about marine species and ocean environments. There has been limited assessment of marine wildlife tourism experiences and educational programs to identify whether these increase tourists' knowledge, promoting attitudinal shifts and also lifestyle changes that aid marine conservation and help to conserve marine wildlife. Similarly, there has been little evaluation of on-site and longer term conservation intentions, or behaviors, of visitors that benefit marine wildlife and environments. This article reviews the education and conservation benefits of marine wildlife experiences in Australia using Orams' framework of indicators to manage marine tourism. The key indicator for tourists assessed in this article is behavior/lifestyle change that benefits marine species, along with three indicators of conservation outcomes for marine environments. Information is drawn from selected case studies of research on guided tourist encounters with whales, dolphins, and marine turtles from 1996 to 2007, mainly in Australia. This analysis found tourist learning during mediated encounters with marine wildlife contributes to proenvironmental attitudes and improved on-site behavior changes, with some longer term intentions to engage in conservation actions that benefit marine species.

Possibilities of Using the Tourism Area Life Cycle Model to Understand and Provide Sustainable Solution for Tourism Development in the Antarctic Region

“…However, it is important to note that it was tourists to Antarctic bases in the 1980s who first forced base personnel to respect the recommendations on environmental protection, sometimes appealing to governments to ensure that members of personnel cleaned up the area around the bases. In addition to this type of social pressure, tourists are more frequently becoming ambassadors for the whole of the Antarctic, spreading the word about the need to protect the continent [23][24][25]. What is more, tourist traffic also has a purely practical role, as tour operators often help individual bases with logistical issues.…”

Change in Focus of Attention Among Whale-watch Passengers Occurs As a Function of Temporal Phase of the Tour

“…Nonetheless, each tour has the potential to be a structured experience, with the possibility of guiding participants through an educational sequence with clear objectives (Forestell, 2002;lück, 2003;Zeppel & Muloin, 2008b). In many cases, a whalewatch excursion allows for an interpretative process that permits people to integrate observation with scientific information through a "direct guided experience" that combines a first-hand experience with a trained guide (Forestell, 1992).…”

“…Further investigation of how educational goals can be achieved and effectively assessed during and (or) following a whale-watch experience is required to identify those elements of a whale-watch program (e.g., nature of the presentation, platform of delivery, use of props, etc.) that ensure educational goals are met (International Fund for Animal Welfare [IFAW], 1997;lück, 2008;Zeppel & Muloin, 2008b).…”

Contrasting views on Antarctic tourism: ‘last chance tourism’ or ‘ambassadorship’ in the last of the wild

“…It has been claimed that eco-tourism positively changes the attitudes of tourists (Eijgelaar et al, 2010) and there is even talk of tourists undergoing ethical and environmental transformations (Weaver, 2005) that result in a long-term commitment to conservation (Zeppel and Muloin, 2008). This could be true in the case of Antarctic tourism.…”