Marine protected areas (MPAs) effectively improve the biomass and diversity in heavily exploited marine systems, but often fail to reach their full potential because they require more space, time, and consistency of regulation. Recently, shark dive based tourism has brought about increased awareness to exploited reef systems and increased shark populations to those areas during feeding times. Additionally, denser shark populations may influence community composition and structure. We collected visual census data from 50m belt transects at four different reefs in Fiji: two MPAs with shark-based ecotourism, one MPA without food provisioning from shark-based ecotourism, and one unprotected area without food provisioning for ecotourism.
Results/Conclusions:
We found significantly higher fish abundance within reserves than outside of reserves and higher levels of both diversity and evenness at locations with regular shark feedings than areas without, indicating that shark dive based tourism positively impacts the richness of established marine reserves, potentially serving as a method to improve upon current conservation methods. Within the two areas with shark feeding, we found that the use of chum increases the average fish abundance, diversity, evenness, and the average trophic level on the reef implying that the methods of feeding may increase or decrease the impacts of shark based tourism on the reef at large.