Review by Ronda Green,PhD, Chair of Wildlife Tourism Australia. January 2026
There has been much written about pros and cons of wildlife tourism and ecotourism over the past couple of decades. it is true that even well-intentioned tourism has caused damage to nature, from species populations through to whole ecosystems. It is also true that well-planned and well-operated ecotourism can actually benefit the environment, including biodiversity, the idea of which first led to the founding of Wildlife Tourism Australia.
José Truda Palazzo Jr’s 2024 book includes many accounts of enticing experiences for nature-loving visitors viewing sharks, manta rays, whales, seahorses, corals and other marine creatures throughout the world. Importantly, he also offers many examples of benefits of well-run tourism operations to both the environment and local human populations.
Much of the book is then devoted to defending marine wildlife tourism against exaggerated claims of negative impact that ignore the broader picture of other potential uses of the same marine ecosystems . Many studies have reported problems of impacts on marine animals, sometimes with “sensationalistic headlines and published paper titles” without considering what might happen if various tourism ventures ceased to operate.
Cetacean (whales, dolphins, porpoises) watching is estimated to bring in two billion US dollars per year around the world. A number of examples are provided showing the effects on economics as local people, including fishermen, establish cetacean watching tours, and the growth of whale populations since the cessation of whaling. Shark finning has also decreased in areas where marine ecotourism has been successfully introduced. Another benefit,forboth science and conservation, is the opportunities opened up for scientists to travel with tour operators or lead citizen science projects, greatly expanding our knowledge of the behaviour and ecology of marine creatures.
Palazzo cites many cases where ecotourism has assisted conservation. The endangered Irrawaddy River dolphin for instance appears to be benefitting from the Wildlife Conservation Society working with government authorities and local communities in Myanmar to establish protected areas in which they promote ecotourism. Other marine mammals which have achieved additional protection by local populations and governments once their tourism potential was realised includes seals and seasons, as well as dugongs in tropical Asia and manatees in South America. Birdwatching is increasingly a big money-spinner, with marine birdwatching no exception. Palazzo records that many protected breeding colonies on or near the coast of South America have become “magnets” for such tourism.
Tourism involving diving with sharks or watching them from boats has encouraged protection of these animals instead of destructive and cruel finning practices or fear-driven excessive culling. Even the giant but essentially harmless whale sharks used to be killed in their hundreds in some regions for meat and fins but tourism now has led to their protection as well as the economic well-being of people living on the coasts of tropical America and Asia. He notes that local fishermen are paid very poorly for shark-finning by the middlemen in the business, but get to keep a much larger proportion of income from boat and diving tours. Manta ray populations have also benefitted from tourism taking over from fishing in some regions.
Marine reptiles have also benefitted. Former turtle poachers have turned to showing visitors living turtles. Palazzo cites one endeavour in Brazil, where many turtles and eggs used to be harvested for food but are now protected, with good educational and research projects working in with tourism which generates millions of dollars annually to keep the whole enterprise running.
Coral reefs are of course a major drawcard for tourists, and their economic importance has led to widespread protection. One excellent example he mentions in Misool Eco Resort in eastern Indonesia, which was very effective in campaigning for local marine sanctuaries which, in addition to protecting the coral itself, now boast much higher populations of sharks, rays and other fish. Mangroves are another ecosystem benefitting from conservation measures in association with tourism, and he provides examples in Asia and Africa. .
Now, what about those claims of negative impacts of tourism on Marne wildlife? To be sure there have been some very bad examples, and some very good examples. How abut the others that ie somewhere in between?
His main questioning of this can be summed up in the paragraph: “Should we sacrifice the many, evident, real-world socioeconomic and environmental benefits of whale watching (or Ecotourism, for that matter) due to perceptions of potential impacts, more often than not anchored not in scientifically proven facts or experience, but in ‘moral’ or ‘ethical’ beliefs of certain groups of people?”
“Overfishing is undoubtedly the most serious immediate threat to marine life” says Palazzo (and there is much support for this claim), including not only the target species but also the bycatch – the turtles, dolphins and many others that are accidentally caught along with those species that the nets or hooks were intended for. The cruel and wasteful (and totally unnecessary in terms of protein or favour) shark-finning industry kills up to 100,000,000 sharks each year. Especially destructive is bottom-trawling, killing billions of molluscs, sponges, corals, crustaceans and other non-target species every year. [As a brief aside from this review, I accompanied some postgraduate university students on a fishing boat near Melbourne years ago. As the crew hauled up the nets, there were many starfish, molluscs, non-target fish species and other marine creatures accompanying the species they were after. As I watched the non-target fish flopping around on the deck I expected the crew to swoosh them into buckets and release them over the side. Instead they used a sharp device like those employed in spearing fallen leaves and other debris in the garden, impaling each fish before tossing it overboard, ensuring it had no hope of survival (as well as plenty of pain). I couldn’t hep but wonder, if they do this while knowingly being observed by environmental science students and their lecturers, how can we trust their ethical and conservation principles at other times?].
He continues to discuss the massive destruction of coral reefs and mangroves, the problems of plastic (including micro plastic) pollution and mass tourism (some of which gets called ecotourism but isn’t), and laments that the “vast majority of people on this planet simply do not have any clue about these life-threatening issues,” and that they don’t feel a connection with marine ecosystems as they might with those they are familiar with on land, and “simply do not relate as yet to what lies beneath the waves or beyond the blue horizon.” A gap that good marine tourism can help fill.
And yet, many politicians and academics see only the extractive industries such as fishing and mining, as having rights regarding the sea, some anthropologists claiming that ecotourism is a threat to traditional extractive customs, and marine conservationists and those in the ecotourism industry (even locals who used to fish but now lead tours) very often being “marginalised or excluded outright from political processes related to resource stewardship”.
Those who report negative impacts of tourism on Marne life do so quite rightly when real damage occurs. But do some of these reports go a bit overboard, so to speak?
Palazzo cites a number of studies indicating that many tourists learn about and increase their concern for marine vertebrates as a result of their encounters with them.
In many world regions swimming with whales and other sea creatures is now forbidden because it is seen as harassment, even in cases where the animals are perfectly able to end the interaction at any time by simply swimming away. It seems obvious that watching or swimming with whales, as long as they are not surrounded or in other way impeded from natural behaviour, is far less damaging than whaling, and Palazzo points to the loss of opportunity to introduce people to these magnificent creatures, increase their empathy towards them and encourage them to learn more. Palazzo acknowledges that academic and decision-makers opposing marine ecotourism often have a genuine desire to contribute to conservation, but that narrow-mindedness is rampant, resulting in over-restrictive regulations. He also notes that delegates to important conferences, including the relevant COPs, CITES, United Nations and the International Whaling Commission, generally do not include small tour operators who could otherwise present their points of view.
Tonga is famous for the opportunity to swim with whales, and the activity is now very important to the country ́s economy, especially as only three other countries allow it.
Close interaction with wildlife is frowned on by many, but how problematical is it if there are no serious consequences for welfare or conservation? Regulations on most wildlife interactions prevent physical contact, but grey whales of the Mexican coast deliberately approach people and seem to enjoy being touched and caressed or splashed with water. “These interactions have lasted for decades and no deleterious impact on the animals has been detected” says Palazzo. “This is due in no small part to the watchful presence of the local guides”
Responsible, well-controlled feeding of marine wildlife, he says, should not be confused with haphazard feeding by tourists. Proper planning and management is important. Palazzo related how cetacean expert Giuseppe Notarbartolo helped develop management plans for tourist interaction with wld spinner dolphins in Egypt, involving a cap on daily visitor numbers, and three major zones: a very large no-entry zone where dolphins can stay far away from humans when they wish to, a zone where swimmers are allowed to enter with a guide (but no boats), and the outer zone where boats carrying the tourists are allowed.Entry fees pay rangers for their conservation work well beyond the site.
However, he laments that “misuse of scientific literature related to ‘impacts’ could lead either to unnecessary regulation or to excessive requests for ‘further studies’ or monitoring”, especially in low-income regions where people cannot readily comply with a plethora of regulations but are not demonstrably affecting welfare of individuals or conservation of species. He accepts that for some habitats and species there may be a need for regulations enforced through bureaucratic systems” but that in many cases over-regulation prevents some useful ecotourism ventures from operating.
There have been papers about the effects of divers on seahorses, for instance, but ignoring alternative human activities such as selling live ones for aquaria or dead ones as either souvenirs or ingredients for Chinese medicine, while “tourism might be one of the very few things that can keep seahorses away from capture in many places”. A study in Australia showing an increase in numbers of sharks living near a cage-dive facility that used feeding concluded that this increase was a potentially-negative impact, resulting in some cage-diving operations being closed, thus hampering an industry that was helping to counteract the public image of sharks as evil killing machines, and in a country where massive culling of sharks is often called for to protect swimmers.
He notes also that habituation to humans is often regarded as an “impact” even in situations where no discernible disadvantage to the animals has been observed. Various other examples are given of over-reaction to minor impacts of responsible tourism in comparison to massive impacts of other industries, concluding that many of the hundred of academic papers he reviewed for this book “do not … make any cost-benefit analyses regarding what would happen to the species or ecosystem visited if other, extractive uses were the norm and not Ecotourism.”.
After various recommendations for future action, he concedes “So please let’s start, now, to make Marine Ecotourism receive the standing it deserves— that its professionals and clients deserve, and that Nature deserves to have as a vital conservation tool.”
All in all an interesting and important read for anyone interested in the potential of wildlife ecotourism to benefit biodiversity conservation.