Scuba diving tourism with critically endangered grey nurse sharks (Carcharias taurus) off eastern Australia: Tourist demographics, shark behaviour and diver compliance

K.R. Smith, C. Scarpaci, M.J. Scarr and N.M. Otway

Tourism Management, 2014, vol. 45, issue C, 211-225

Abstract: Guidelines and a national code of conduct were implemented to manage scuba diving tourism with the critically endangered grey nurse shark (Carcharias taurus) along the Australian east coast. The demographics of diving tourists, swimming behaviour of grey nurse sharks at various life-history stages and compliance of divers to the guidelines/code of conduct were simultaneously assessed during diver–shark interactions at four sites from March 2011 to February 2012. Milling was the most frequent swimming behaviour observed and no significant changes occurred with the number of divers or distance to sharks. Divers exhibited 100% compliance with all guidelines investigated. Satisfactory compliance may have been attributable to guideline clarity, the ease of establishing diver–shark interactions, stakeholder involvement in management processes and diver perceptions of sharks. Similar sampling of group and individual shark behaviour should be done to further enhance the understanding of the beneficial and adverse impacts of this marine wildlife tourism sector.

Keywords: Marine management; Shark; Carcharias taurus; Critically endangered; Impact; Behaviour; Regulations; Code of conduct (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261517714000958

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:touman:v:45:y:2014:i:c:p:211-225

DOI: 10.1016/j.tourman.2014.05.002

Access Statistics for this article

Tourism Management is currently edited by Chris Ryan

More articles in Tourism Management from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().