The Tourism Carrying Capacity of Underwater Trails in Isabel Island National Park, Mexico

Abstract

The popularity of ecotourism in the marine protected areas of Mexico has increased over the last 10 years; in particular there is a large development of a SCUBA diving industry in the Mexican Pacific including Isabel Island. Given the risks associated with human activity in the marine environments around this island, we propose two ecotourism management strategies: (1) the creation and use of underwater trails, and (2) the estimation of the specific tourism carrying capacity (TCC) for each trail. Six underwater trails were selected in sites that presented elements of biological, geological, and scenic interest, using information obtained during field observations. The methodology used to estimate the TCC was based upon the physical and biological conditions of each site, the infrastructure and equipment available, and the characteristics of the service providers and the administrators of the park. Correction factors of the TCC included elements of the quality of the visit and the threat and vulnerability of the marine environment of each trail (e.g., divers' expertise, size and distance between groups of divers, accessibility, wind, coral coverage). The TCC values ranged between 1,252 and 1,642 dives/year/trail, with a total of 8,597 dives/year for all six trails. Although these numbers are higher than the actual number of recreational visitors to the island (~1,000 dives per year), there is a need for adequate preventive management if the diving sites are to maintain their esthetic appeal and biological characteristics. Such management might be initially directed toward using only the sites and the TCC proposed here.

Assessment of the Economic Value of Ecological Conservation of the Kenting Coral Reef

“…The number of visitors is related to the man-made damage that the environment can withstand and the ability to restore itself to the previous state [32]. Controlling the number of visitors is also a way to awaken the environmental protection consciousness of visitors and effective control can provide a quality travel experience for visitors [33]. The study on the impact of human activities on the Kenting ecosystem [3] indicated that the excessive number of tourists, suspended solids in water, and nutrient salt and ammonia are the main factors causing the decline of living coral coverage.…”

“…Regarding the discussion, we can generate the policy implications for the protected area managers of the coral reef: (1) the management program have to contain living coral coverage, biodiversity, marine protected area, water quality levels, number of visitors, and a coral reefs conservation fund for the reef protected area [6,7,9,25,27,33]; (2) it would meet the goals of sustainable development to contain the aspects of ecology, recreation, and institution into protected area management [8,44]; (3) capturing the heterogeneity's preference for the stakeholders would help to integrate the comprehensive framework of market segmentation strategy by combining the qualitative and quantitative data in a protected area [44][45][46][47]; (4) for the environmental education and positioning of a reef protected area, programmers may concentrate on increasing the 50%-75% of living coral coverage, increasing the biodiversity, increasing the marine protected area at 6%, improving the seawater quality to an unpolluted level, and restricting the daily number of visitors to 75% of the status quo. Thus, this would meet the criterion of sustainable marine tourism of reef protected area simultaneously with a visitor's preferences and opinions for the effectiveness program in the future.…”

Tourism Carrying Capacity for Beaches of South Andaman Island, India

“…The concept of TCC, though emerged in the 1970s and 1980, has received significant attention in recent years as part of an effective strategy to address environmental, economic, and social issues [6][7][8].…”

Eco-touristic snorkelling routes at Marinha beach (Algarve): Environmental education and human impacts

“…Nevertheless, in order to avoid environmental impacts, it is still not clear whether it is preferable to use routes to concentrate divers, or allow them to spread out over large areas [27]. According to these authors, the implementation of snorkelling routes should consider several issues, among which that the concentration of visitors may increase the stress level of the site [28] and promote higher level of damage to benthic communities [18].…”