The economic Value of Shark-Diving Tourism in Australia!

From the paper - click for detail.

Interesting!

So, in 2014, Shark diving in Australia was worth 25.5m.

This compares to 42.2m for Fiji, 18m for Palau or a whopping 109m for the Bahamas - or maybe not quite as this paper only looks at direct expenditures. This also compares to the value of 2.2 bn dollars attributed to Australia's dive-related spending for marine tourism.

Frankly, I'm not terribly impressed.

Considering the size of Australia's tourism industry but also, the sheer potential bearing in mind Australia's enormous coastline and wide array of marine habitats, and its large number of Elasmobranchs, this is really just a pittance. But it is what it is - and if I were to venture an explanation (which I am not), I would certainly want to explore the effects of Australia's Shark attack phobia but very much also that of its stifling regulatory framework.

But I'm digressing as always.

Enjoy Charlie's paper.

Shark Diving Tourism - Paper!

Absolutely agree! 

Finally!

I say, this is as good as it gets!

After years of frustration at the various stupidities about our industry that have been proffered by an motley array of researchers and other bloviators with little personal experience but obvious agendas, here comes a paper written by people who being Shark divers have been there and done it, and obviously understand what they are talking about.
And... nice to see the frankly surprising cooperation! :)

Required reading!

The global code of conduct and scoring system?

Absolutely agree! 

Developing a meaningful code that is not too generic will be a huge challenge in view of the highly diverging circumstances in terms of legal framework, location, species etc. - but on top of the general statements (= e.g. don't harass), one could envision sub-categories (e.g. provisioned or not) that could lead to the necessary specificity. Plus, there will have to be considerable industry buy-in - so guys, talk to us!

And when it comes to the rating which I strongly advocate, the challenge will be to avoid the obvious issues of liability for the rating agency - but again, it can, and should be done.

And guess what - people are already working on both issues! :)

So, does this paper make me 100% happy?

Of course not! :)

Precautionary approach?

Like I continue to state, we've been enduring decades of unsubstantiated slander despite of having built one of the safest tourism activities anywhere - and I am really sick an tired of that.

Our track record speaks for itself and with that in mind, I do not at all buy into the recommendation that we need to adopt a precautionary approach on all those assumed potential risks pending more in-depth analysis by the intelligentsia.
E.g. Ben and Cristina have been hand feeding those Reefies for what feels like time immemorial, and this with zero documented side effects and owing to their protective gear, zero incidents. With that in mind, it makes zero sense for them to discontinue anything only because somebody proffers some hypothetical caveat - but at the same time, should somebody come up with hard evidence, I am equally convinced that Cristina would be the first to implement the necessary changes!

So once again - stop speculating but show me the fucking evidence instead!

Or the bloody ban of flash photography!

This stupidity has been the "mainstay" of sustainable Whale Shark snorkeling procedures, see e.g. here. Methinks it was likely once developed by some tree hugging do-gooder and then simply copy/pasted uncritically, and it has been my pet hate ever since. 

I mean, seriously: eye trauma? How does the intensity of an electronic strobe compare to those gasquillions of bursts of UV-saturated sunlight that are hitting the eyes of a WS when it basks at the surface? 

And no - regulation is the very last resort!

But yes I'm digressing.

Not 100% happy - but 99.5% I am!

This is spot-on both in scope and content, and I cannot but applaud the authors for an exhaustive, thorough, unbiased and what is more important, accurate analysis of the issues at hand.

Bravo - job well done!

Citizen Science is good Science!

Bingo.

Read this - and here is the paper!

Now we finally dispose of some powerful evidence that despite of many critical voices, citizen science really does work.

Of course we knew that already.

We've been employing trained observers to record data on Shark Reef since 2003, and those observations have been the backbone of many of Juerg's papers where they have complemented the data obtained via acoustic and satellite telemetry. In 2012, the concept has been expanded throughout the whole of Fiji where every six months, the majority of preeminent dive operators are participating in the Great Fiji Shark Count where they are counting Sharks, Rays and Turtles with their customers and passing on the data to the project team and ultimately, Christine. On top of that, Projects Abroad are now conducting such counts on every dive and uploading the data to eShark, meaning that Beqa Lagoon is now being monitored year-round.

And the results?

This is long term monitoring, and trends will only become visible over time - but when it comes to the Sharks, anecdotal evidence is already pointing to local declines. My hope is that we may well see an improvement once the authorities will have to increase their monitoring and management effort in line with the looming implementation of CITES.

We shall see.

But that's another story.

Congratulations to the indefatigable Gabe and the dream team from Western Australia for yet again an excellent job.

Bravo! 

Reef Sharks - new Papers!

Grey Reef aggregation - likely in Apataki's Trou aux Requins - stellar pic by Chip!

Great stuff!

This first paper is about Grey Reefies.

It's by the authors of the Fiji Shark tourism paper and really a nice piece of research - and kudos to Gabe on the first authorship!

Rather surprisingly, it caused quite a kerfuffle on Patric's blog - but as I said there, Patric's comments are a tad harsh, the more as that particular species is not a frequent target of the long liners. 

But the general gist, i.e. that publishing data about philopatry carries some inherent risks is of course correct. I did blog about it here and came to the conclusion that such data should be used for conservation and management purposes and only be shared widely if there is robust and above all, fully enforced local protection - something that certainly pertains to Palau, especially for the popular and highly visited stretch between Siae's and New Dropoff!

Nice re-cap here

And yes Patric - Palau lays east of the Philippines (not north, south or west)! 

And... ? :)

This paper is about Blacktip Reef Sharks.

Inter alia, this one is by the authors of that Lemon Shark paper who continue their observations and in-depth analysis of the Shark Population of French Polynesia as part of the ORP and CRIOBE.

It investigates the genetic makeup of the Blacktip population in several of those islands and describes that it is highly fragmented, meaning that gene flow (= Sharks traveling between populations) is low. The conclusion it draws is that in order to protect Sharks, it is better to establish Shark Sanctuaries rather than to try and protect them via MPAs.

Well, yes, that is certainly true in general - the bigger the better!

On the other hand, as a staunch lumper, I cringe at the recent trend of splitting everything. There are several ignominious examples from Avian, Amphibian and freshwater Fish taxonomy where the designation of many sub-species hast resulted in a plethora of tiny local populations, and subsequently, in the squandering of scarce public resources in the quest of preserving every single one of them - and this fatally reminds me of those occurrences. 

With Shark conservation being as difficult as it is, I'd be quite happy to see progress at the species-complex level - the more as otherwise, most of those tiny populations would succumb to the requirement of prioritizing one's resources by applying conservation triage!

But yes those Sanctuaries are great - at least for as long as Shark fishing remains so poorly managed!

And what about the implications for us here in Fiji?

The first one is that with such high residency levels, the Shark Corridor offers a substantial degree of protection much like in the case of our Bulls.

Other than that, we don't know - yet!

In Juerg's research, we've so far concentrated almost exclusively on the Bulls. But we have also recorded many observations about the other species, and our data base undoubtedly contains the answers to several of the same questions - that is, if somebody had the time to analyze them! But fear not, Juerg's next paper is already in the works, and it will contain much more info about the other species!

Of interest and contrary to all other Grey Reef aggregation sites I have visited, the SRMR harbors more males than females who however also appear more transient much like the Bulls and also leave for what we believe is the mating season in mid year. 

The Blacktips on the other hand appear to be very much resident, and it will be interesting to explore whether the females go walkabout to some nursery area like those in Moorea - which is highly likely as contrary to the Whitetips that appear to give birth in situ, we see zero small juveniles!

Anyway, I'm digressing as always.

Read the papers - it's great stuff, and kudos to the authors on a job well done!

Shark Diving in Fiji - here are the Numbers!

Shark diving - not only fun but extremely valuable, too!

Well it was about time!
After keeping it a closely guarded secret, Pew have decided to finally publish the study they commissioned last year and I must say that I am impressed and also mighty proud!

Executive Summary

We quantified the economic revenues generated by shark diving and the distribution of these revenues to the principal local stakeholders involved with the industry, including businesses, government and local community.

Shark-diving contributed US $42.2 million to the economy of Fiji, a sum composed of revenues generated by the industry combined with the taxes paid by shark-divers to the government.

This estimate was based on self-administered questionnaires designed to collect information on the costs and benefit of the shark-diving industry. We conducted the study in August/September 2011 and distributed questionnaires on the islands of Viti Levu (including the islands of Nananu-i-Ra and Beqa), Vanua Levu, Taveuni and Kadavu, the Yasawa and Mamanuca groups. Questionnaires were answered by 289 divers, 18 dive operators, six resort managers (surveyed at Pacific Harbour and Coral Coast only), 14 dive guides and nine local subsistence fishers from villages that regularly received payment from shark-diving operators for the use of the reef of which they are the traditional owners.

We took a conservative approach to all calculations in order to reduce the risk of over-estimating the value of shark-diving to the Fijian economy We calculated the economic revenue of shark-diving to Fiji based on three key pieces of information:

• (1) Total number of divers visiting the country and the proportion of tourists engaged in dive activities from the Fiji International Visitor Survey 2009

• (2) All expenditures of the divers visiting Fiji primarily to engage in shark-diving activities(“dedicated shark-divers”) as revealed by our surveys;

• (3) The expenditures of divers who visited Fiji for reasons other than diving with sharks, but chose to engage in shark-diving while in the country (“casual shark-divers”) as revealed by our surveys.Expenditures of these divers were allocated as the proportion of their trip spent shark diving, rather than for their entire visit.

In 2010 we estimated that approximately 49,000 divers were engaged in shark-diving activities in Fiji accounting for 78% of the 63,000 divers visiting the country. Dedicated and casual shark-divers accounted for 24% and 54% of all divers we interviewed respectively.

The shark-diving industry contributed US $17.5 million in taxes to the government, a sum composed of corporate taxes from shark-diving (US $11.6 million) and the direct taxes from shark-divers (US $5.9 million).

A minimum of US $4 million was generated annually by shark-diving for local communities. This revenue consisted of salaries paid by the industry to employees (US $3.9 million annually) and community levies paid by dive operators to traditional owners in villages for access to reefs (US $124,200 annually). Employees of the dive industry were predominantly Fijian (13 of 14 dive guides who responded to surveys).

Community levies from shark-diving have played a significant role in promoting the conservation of reefs through systems of traditional ownership.

Viti Levu hosted the largest number of dedicated and casual shark-divers (17,000) with Pacific Harbour accounting for around 50% of the shark-divers, or approximately 8,600 tourists. The Mamanuca/Yasawa group also hosted a large number of shark-divers (11,000) while Vanua Levu/Taveuni hosted approximately 3,600. Kadavu had only 17% of divers identified as casual shark divers and no dedicated shark-divers interviewed during our survey.

Shark-diving generated approximately US $10.2 million on Viti Levu (63% of business revenues from diving) and US $3.2 million (40% of the business revenues) in the Mamanuca/Yasawa groups.

Yes I'm obviously biased.
But having witnessed the enormous effort and acribic number crunching of Gabe Vianna and Mark Meekan when they came to Fiji to collate the data I say, this is as good as it gets - and the real figures are probably even higher!
As a reminder, here is our own back-of-the envelope calculation for the contribution by BAD, once again probably too conservative.

Plus, this only looks at Shark diving.
Like I said e.g. here, I personally believe that the value of Sharks extends far wider, by preserving the health of Fiji's marine habitats and thus having a crucial importance for not only tourism in general but also local fisheries and the well being of our coastal communities.

You can find the entire paper here.
Required reading!