The Tourism Carrying Capacity of Underwater Trails

Authors: Eduardo RíosJara Cristian Moisés GalvánVilla Fabián Alejandro RodríguezZaragoza Ernesto LópezUriarte Vicente Teófilo MuñozFernández

Publish Date: 2013/05/10

Volume: 52, Issue: 2, Pages: 335-347

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Abstract

The popularity of ecotourism in the marine protected areas of Mexico has increased over the last 10 years in particular there is a large development of a SCUBA diving industry in the Mexican Pacific including Isabel Island Given the risks associated with human activity in the marine environments around this island we propose two ecotourism management strategies 1 the creation and use of underwater trails and 2 the estimation of the specific tourism carrying capacity TCC for each trail Six underwater trails were selected in sites that presented elements of biological geological and scenic interest using information obtained during field observations The methodology used to estimate the TCC was based upon the physical and biological conditions of each site the infrastructure and equipment available and the characteristics of the service providers and the administrators of the park Correction factors of the TCC included elements of the quality of the visit and the threat and vulnerability of the marine environment of each trail eg divers’ expertise size and distance between groups of divers accessibility wind coral coverage The TCC values ranged between 1252 and 1642 dives/year/trail with a total of 8597 dives/year for all six trails Although these numbers are higher than the actual number of recreational visitors to the island ~1000 dives per year there is a need for adequate preventive management if the diving sites are to maintain their esthetic appeal and biological characteristics Such management might be initially directed toward using only the sites and the TCC proposed hereWe thank M PérezPeña A MartínezZataraín A NuñoHermosillo and A SantosCrespo for their substantial help during this project We are grateful to National Commission of Natural Protected Areas CONANP staff particularly C GarcíaChavelas JA CastrejónPineda LE CanoSánchez G PérezLozano and C RoblesCastillo for their help during field work at Isabel Island The National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of the Biodiversity of Mexico CONABIO and PROMEPSEP partially funded this study All research activities were also supported by the Academic Group UDGCA046 of the Universidad de Guadalajara Mexico Many thanks to two anonymous reviewers for critically reviewing the manuscript

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