Impact of Coral Bleaching on tourism and the economy
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IMPACT OF CORAL BLEACHING ON TOURISM AND THE ECONOMY
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Impact of Coral Bleaching on tourism and the economy
Name
Institution
IMPACT OF CORAL BLEACHING ON TOURISM AND THE ECONOMY
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Impact of Coral Bleaching on tourism and the economy
Coral bleaching is defined as intracellular andosymbionts’ loss by either algal pigmentation loss
or expulsion.
The breakdown of the relationship between the zooxanthallae which provide the
coral with most of its color and the coral host causes carol bleaching.
The coral’s tissues looses
it color and appears transparent hence exposing the inner skeleton of the coral which is bright
white.
Without zeoxanthallae many corals struggle to survive due to starvation resulting from
the bleaching though some corals are capable to feed themselves. In case of persistence in the
coral stress the bleached corals always dies off. The recovery of the coral reefs with a higher
coral death rate as a result of bleaching takes a long period or even a decade.
Coral bleaching is mainly caused by heat stress due to higher temperatures in the sea.
Any
temperature increase by one degree Celsius in a period of about four weeks is enough to cause
coral bleaching events.
The coral begin to die if the temperature increase continues for more
than eight weeks.
Reefs can also be affected by high water temperatures at the global and
regional scale.
Other factors that can cause stress include; low water salinity and poor quality of
water from pollutant runoff.
Therefore as the climate changes, is believed to become more
rampant and severe this would see an increase in sea temperatures and increased coral effect
from other stressing factors can highly increase the bleaching effect on the barrier reefs.
A global bleaching event took place in 1998 where a higher percentage of reefs on the barrier
reef were affected by bleaching.
30-50% mortality rate of the coral reefs was recorded in the
Philippine town of El Nido. The sea temperature during this time was the highest that has ever
been recorded. In 2002 a record of 605 reefs was affected by mass bleaching a highest coral
bleaching ever recorded in the world. It was stimulated by higher sea temperatures some few
IMPACT OF CORAL BLEACHING ON TOURISM AND THE ECONOMY
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centigrade higher than summers maxima caused by two periods of very hot weather.
This has
affected both the tourist sector and the economy in this island.
Impact on tourism
Diving tour was highly interfered with coral bleaching. This led to a drastic decline of the
tourists visiting the affected islands. Due to degradation of the reefs in regions marked as the
diving areas and dive markets has seen loss of its Image and attraction.
According to studies the
percentage of diving tourists has gone down to an estimate of about10% (Cesar 2000, pg 11)
Nonetheless the low rates of occupancy indicate that the loss of divers is a big blow to the resort
industry. This also indicates the effect the coral bleaching has had on tourism.
Recreational fishing was also another sector of tourism in the island region that was affected.
According to studies done there have been an average of 50% and more decline in tourist
visitation (Herman Cesar 2000, pg 11).
This was a result of exposure of fish to predators and
migration due to the loss of food and hiding place where they could camouflage as the coral reefs
they relied on had died off.
According to recreational fishing survey (2000) 6% of the
recreational fishing in Queensland occurred more than 5 km away from the coast line. This
meant that many boats that were currently being used could not be used for this purposes other
than dose-in-shore fishing due to the length restrictions put in place.
A welfare loss to the tourist was also impacted.
Other than financial losses bleaching also
affected the tourist’s satisfaction creating a loss to their welfare.
The tourists who had enjoyed
visiting these places for instance the divers found tourism irrelevant since their need could not be
satisfied anymore.
Some tourist would just visit to see and witness the beauty of the marine
nature especially with the colorful coral reefs.
It didn’t matter the nature of tourists that visited
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IMPACT OF CORAL BLEACHING ON TOURISM AND THE ECONOMY
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the place whether diver or not the bottom-line was that they were interested in the marine
environment (Cesar et al, 2000 pg 12).
The question can be asked as how many tourists can pay
an extra cost to travel to areas where coral reefs were still healthy.
Impact on the Economy
Tourism is one of the greatest sectors in the economy.
There the effect that tourism has had as a
result of coral bleaching is directly felt in the economy.
Further the people living along and
within the island regions depended mainly on this economic sector.
Billions of dollars was
received by the local economies from the tourists to reefs through fishing trips, marine nature
tours, diving tours, restaurants hotels and many other businesses established within the reef
ecosystem. Coral beaching has therefore impacted on the economy as discussed below;
Tourism industry used to receive high revenues from diving and recreational fishing suffered a
great loss of revenue due to tourist attraction and visitation. From the studies carried out by the
USAID, it is evident that in the mid –eights up to late nineties there have been high returns in
tourism sector in El Nido.
Due to the coral bleaching event the rate of tourism declined hence
losses in revenue (Cesar 2000, pg 11). Estimation loss of close to 4000 guests per annum with
revenue loss of up to 2 million US dollar has been made from the studies carried out in this area.
Nevertheless it is unclear has to what extent was the loss caused by the coral bleaching as
observed by (Dixon & Hodgson 2000).
Fishing industry; though fishing contributed also to tourism in this region; it was also
commercialized as the people leaving within this region depended on the fish for food. Coral
mortality affected the reef fish composition as it eliminated the functions of reefs as breeding
zones and feeding areas for fishes other organism in the sea. According to Hourigan et al (1988),
IMPACT OF CORAL BLEACHING ON TOURISM AND THE ECONOMY
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the existence of reef fish was a result of coral reefs, largely by of live coral percentage cover.
With a reduction in fish therefore there was a low fish catch this translated into low revenues
earned by the fishermen.
As much as chance of coral recover exists the fishermen need to adapt
new fishing gear and management in order to respond to this climate changes. (Cinner et al.
2009)
Lastly the labor market was also affected by the mortality of coral reefs.
With a high reduction
in the tourist number visiting the coral sites many businesses were forced to retrench some of its
working force.
This had to been done as a preventive measure against the collapse of these
businesses as a result of high operation cost compared to the rate of returns.
Some hotels and
restaurant were closed down rendering other people jobless while some coral sites were
abandoned since they had lacked relevance. The labor force increased the total loss from 2
million US dollars to 3 million US dollars (Cesar et al, 2000).
Conclusion
Indeed the impact of coral bleaching on the tourism and economy at large is immense. It is
therefore prudent of the governments to come up with clear strategies on how to safeguard this
tourist attraction site and plantation, to promote and sustain the deteriorating tourism sector in
the affected regions.
Also the Environmentalist should work tirelessly to conduct more research
and find solutions to this menace.
Lastly global warming as a vice should be addressed globally
since it is the major cause of high temperatures that have rendered corals lifeless.
IMPACT OF CORAL BLEACHING ON TOURISM AND THE ECONOMY
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References
Cesar, H. (2000),
“Economic Valuation of the impacts of coral bleaching on tourism in El Nido,
Philippines”,
Report prepared for USAID, Cesar Environmental Economics Consulting,
Amsterdam,the Netherlands.
Hodgson G. and J.A. Dixon (2000), “
El Nido Revisited: Ecotourism, Logging and Fisheries
” in
H.Cesar (Ed.) "
Collected Essays on the Economics of Coral Reefs
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University,Kalmar, Sweden.
Hodgson. G. and J.A. Dixon. (1988) “
Logging versus fisheries and tourism in Palawan
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Pap. No.7. East-West Environment and Policy Institute, Honolulu, USA.
Cesar, H., A. Waheed, M. Saleem and D. Wilhelmsson (2000), “
Assessing the impacts of the
1998coral reef bleaching on tourism in Sri Lanka and Maldives
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Cesar and L. Pet-Soede, “
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”, CORDIO programme, Report prepared for the World
Bank, Washington DC, USA
Cinner JE, McClanahan TR, Graham NAJ, Pratchett MS,
Wilson SK, Raina JB (2009)
Gear-based fisheries managementas a
potential adaptive response to climate change and coral mortality
. Appl Ecol 46: 724–732.
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IMPACT OF CORAL BLEACHING ON TOURISM AND THE ECONOMY
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Carpenter KE, Niem VH (1998c)
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