Promoting responsible marine tourism through the development of sustainable practice guidelines

Coordinator: Catalina Molina Bustamante.

Location of your project: The area surrounding Drake Bay and Caño Island Biological Reserve, Sierpe Wetland and Marino Ballena National Park, South Pacific, Costa Rica

During the last decade, the Costa Rican South Pacific has experienced an unregulated increase in marine tourism activities. The Caño Island Biological Reserve (CIBR), which has the broadest coral population of the Costa Rican Pacific coast, has around 2.700 marine hectares, but only four diving points for receiving more than 1500 visitors per month. Drake Bay, an important breeding and feeding area for 12 cetacean species have increased it touristic income around 500% in the last 7 years. In Sierpe, a Ramsar Site, channels are used as routes for hundreds of tours boating to Caño Island and others destinies. Unfortunately, most of the tour-operators lack of proper training and they are likely to be a potential stressful factor for the coastal marine ecosystem.

This project is filling information gaps of the current situation of marine tourism (whale-watching and diving) in order to generate baselines to evaluate environmental and socioeconomic impacts. Understanding those impacts will allow us to promote an environmental awareness among tour-operators, tourists and the hosting communities.

At the same time, best practices are been designed according to ISEAL guidelines, and will be elaborated in the framework of codes of responsible tourism known worldwide, such as those of ICRAN and UNWTO. Our guidelines, in a short term will constitute a voluntary code for a local network. We expect this code to develop, with time, in a strong policy to management marine tourism with local participation.