Cabral, Reniel B., Millage, Katherine D., Mayorga, Juan, Kordell, Tia, Kelkar, Mukta, Caughman, Alicia M., Favoretto, Fabio, Schuhbauer, Anna, Aburto-Oropeza, Octavio, Sala, Enric, and Bradley, Darcy (2025) Marine protected areas for dive tourism. Scientific Reports, 15. 1923.

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Abstract

Marine and coastal tourism deliver economic benefits to coastal communities that far surpass those generated by fisheries, yet its potential contribution to global marine conservation remains underexamined. Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) help restore biodiversity and enhance nearby fisheries, but their direct tourism benefits are not well understood. Here, we estimate the global demand for recreational scuba dive tourism, map the distribution and protection status of all marine dive sites globally, and develop a bioeconomic model to estimate the revenue gains from upgrading unprotected dive sites to fully protected MPAs. We estimate that 33.1 million scuba dives occur annually in marine environments worldwide, with 70% taking place within MPAs. However, only 15% of these MPA-affiliated dive sites are highly or fully protected. We show that designating all unprotected recreational dive sites, representing less than 1% of the global ocean, as highly or fully protected MPAs would improve fish biomass and biodiversity while generating an additional US$2 billion per year in direct tourism revenue (not including economic multipliers). Importantly, 62% of marine diving currently occurs in developing countries, underscoring the potential for dive tourism to support both marine conservation and local livelihoods in regions where such benefits are most needed.

Item ID:	86959
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	2045-2322
Copyright Information:	© Crown 2025. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Date Deposited:	26 Aug 2025 01:53
FoR Codes:	38 ECONOMICS > 3801 Applied economics > 380116 Tourism economics @ 50% 41 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES > 4104 Environmental management > 410401 Conservation and biodiversity @ 50%
SEO Codes:	15 ECONOMIC FRAMEWORK > 1599 Other economic framework > 159902 Ecological economics @ 50% 18 ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT > 1805 Marine systems and management > 180599 Marine systems and management not elsewhere classified @ 50%
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