A socio-eco­nom­ic sur­vey meth­od­o­logy that recently estim­ated the dir­ect eco­nom­ic con­tri­bu­tion of shark tour­ism in Aus­tralia may be a use­ful tool for estim­at­ing the value of wild­life tour­ism and eco­tour­ism in oth­er des­tin­a­tions.

For des­tin­a­tions keen to under­stand more about the eco­nom­ic value of their own eco­tour­ism and wild­life tour­ism products, the meth­od­o­logy employed by a team of research­ers led by Charlie Huven­eers “provides stand­ard­ised estim­ates which allow for future com­par­is­on of the scale of oth­er wild­life tour­ism indus­tries (not lim­ited to sharks) with­in or among coun­tries”.

Dr Huven­eers, who is Asso­ci­ate Pro­fess­or at the Col­lege of Sci­ence & Engin­eer­ing, Flinders Uni­ver­sity, South Aus­tralia, and Research Lead­er at the South­ern Shark Eco­logy Group, told the “GT” Blog: “The questionnaire/survey we developed can be used for oth­er indus­tries or in oth­er coun­tries. We have already had sev­er­al quer­ies about the ques­tion­naire and meth­od we have used.”

Shark tourism is worth AU$25.5 million + to Australia

Accord­ing to the abstract to the paper entitled “The eco­nom­ic value of shark-diving tour­ism in Aus­tralia”, which is pub­lished in Reviews in Fish Bio­logy and Fish­er­ies (Sept 2017), “the total annu­al dir­ect expendit­ure by shark divers in Aus­tralia [is] estim­ated con­ser­vat­ively at $25.5 M.

“Addi­tion­al expendit­ure provided by the white-shark and whale-shark-diving indus­tries totalled $8.1 and $12.5 M for the Port Lin­coln and Nin­ga­loo Reef regions respect­ively. Inter­na­tion­al tour­ists diving with white sharks also expen­ded anoth­er $0.9 M in air­fares and oth­er activ­it­ies while in Aus­tralia. These addi­tion­al rev­en­ues show that the eco­nom­ic value of this type of tour­ism do not flow solely to the industry, but are also spread across the region where it is hos­ted.” (All amounts in AUD.)

Shark tourism best practices

The abstract men­tions the need for “adequate man­age­ment of shark-diver inter­ac­tions” to ensure sus­tain­ab­il­ity but Dr Huven­eers says it is dif­fi­cult to provide broad recom­mend­a­tions for oper­at­ors.

“There are many dif­fer­ent types of wild­life tour­ism tar­get­ing many dif­fer­ent shark spe­cies,” he told the “GT” Blog. “For example, man­age­ment of snor­kelling with whale sharks in the trop­ics requires dif­fer­ent reg­u­la­tions to cage-diving with white sharks in South Aus­tralia.

“Most of the wild­life tour­ism industry in Aus­tralia is man­aged by a suite of reg­u­la­tions aimed at min­im­ising the effects of the industry on the tar­get spe­cies and by industry-led codes of con­duct.

“Vis­it­ors should ensure that they are aware of these reg­u­la­tions and the oper­at­ors they use fol­low these reg­u­la­tions and codes of con­duct.”

For sup­ply chain part­ners look­ing to include such exper­i­ences in tour itin­er­ar­ies or trav­el­lers them­selves seek­ing out such exper­i­ences, Dr Huven­eers recom­mends con­sult­ing WWF:

“The WWF in col­lab­or­a­tion with Pro­ject AWARE and The Manta Trust has recently released a guide for respons­ible shark & ray tour­ism that provides a suite of free, prac­tic­al, down­load­able tools that can be used by oper­at­ors, tour­ists, NGOs, loc­al com­munit­ies and resource man­agers to determ­ine wheth­er an industry or oper­at­or uses best prac­tice to min­im­ise their impact to the tar­get shark or ray spe­cies.”

Cage-diving and white shark attacks

Some hypo­thes­ise that white sharks asso­ci­ate boats and humans in the water with a food source due to the chum, bur­ley, or bait that shark cage-diving oper­a­tions use to attract them. The idea is that this leads to more shark attacks on humans.

While the top­ic is out­side the scope of the paper dis­cussed above, the “GT” Blog took the oppor­tun­ity to ask Dr Huven­eers wheth­er there is an estab­lished link between white shark cage-diving and white shark attacks:

“There is cur­rently no data sug­gest­ing that shark-related wild­life tour­ism such as cage-diving increases the risk of shark attacks,” he said.

“The ques­tion of wheth­er pro­vi­sion­ing sharks dur­ing tour­ism activ­it­ies increase the risk of shark attack can­not simply be answered by a yes or no as there are dif­fer­ent under­ly­ing ques­tions behind it. For bait­ing to increase the risk of shark attack, sharks need to have made some asso­ci­ations with food or changed their beha­viour. How­ever, even if such asso­ci­ation has been made, it does not neces­sar­ily mean that it increases the risk of shark attack.

“The gen­er­al ques­tion of the link between wild­life tour­ism and risk of shark attack can be split into two related ques­tions:

Do sharks asso­ci­ate boat or humans with food as a res­ult of inter­act­ing with wild­life tour­ism; and if they do Does it res­ult in increased risk of shark attack.

“The first ques­tion can be invest­ig­ated through exper­i­ment­al and beha­vi­our­al stud­ies and is prob­ably a val­id ques­tion as most anim­als, includ­ing sharks, can learn com­plex tasks and quickly make asso­ci­ations. How­ever, such link has nev­er been demon­strated in white sharks and is unlikely to hap­pen as white sharks are not nor­mally fed dur­ing cage-diving (as per the reg­u­la­tions in place), and that a fre­quent pos­it­ive reward is required for anim­als to make an asso­ci­ation.

“The second ques­tion is more dif­fi­cult to answer. Because of the inher­ent low num­ber of shark attacks, you would nev­er be able to stat­ist­ic­ally prove an increase or decrease.”

Fea­tured image: New Jer­sey school­teach­er Aman­da Brew­er took the photo of the white shark while cage-diving off Seal Island in Mos­sel Bay, South Africa. The photo went vir­al and stirred up a debate about cage-diving. Source: Nation­al Geo­graph­ic Your Shot.