Humans influence shrimp movement: a conservation behavior case study with “Shrimp Watching” ecotourism

Abstract

An increase in ecotourism adversely impacts many animals and contributes to biodiversity loss. To mitigate these impacts, we illustrate the application of a conservation behavior framework towards the development of a sustainable ecotourism management plan. In Ubon Ratchathani, Thailand, thousands of tourists annually come to see a unique mass migration of shrimps on land (referred to as “shrimp parading”). Preliminary work suggests that this tourism has negatively impacted the shrimps. To reduce tourism-related impacts we studied: (1) the decisions shrimps make when parading, and (2) how shrimps respond to different light intensities and colors. We created an artificial stream and tested the conditions that influence parading by experimentally varying the presence of light and systematically manipulating water velocity (10, 60, 100 cm/s). Additionally, we conducted an in situ experiment to study how shrimps respond to tourists’ lights under three intensities (50, 400, 9000 lux) and four colors (white, blue, green, orange, and red). We found most shrimps prefer to leave the river when it is dark and there is low water flow. Shrimps responded the least to red (λmax = 630 nm) and orange (λmax = 625 nm) light at 50 lux. These findings were used to develop a management plan by creating three different tourist zones, which maximize tourist needs and minimize the anthropogenic impacts on the shrimps. This work could be used as an example of the application of conservation behavior framework in developing management plan for sustainable ecotourism for other invertebrate taxa.

Effect of intensity and duration of anthropic noises on European mink locomotor activity and fecal cortisol metabolite levels

“…Linked to road networks development, ecotourism impacts many animals in this Anthropocene epoch, and it may contribute to biodiversity loss ( Hongjamrassilp and Blumstein 2021 ). The impact of ecotourism, recreational activities, and other human activities such as hunting and outdoor sports has been already investigated ( Müllner et al 2004 ; Barja et al 2007 ; Balmford et al 2009 ; Piñeiro et al 2012 ; Tarjuelo et al 2015 ; Casas et al 2016 ).…”