Destructive Tourism Impacts to Coral Reefs

When conducted improperly tourism activities, including snorkeling and diving, can harm coral reefs by reducing hard coral coverage, colony size, and coral abundance due to bumping and standing on corals. Trampling, due to snorkeling and diving, over long periods of time can especially reduce the hard branching coral coverage because they are susceptible to to breakage. Furthermore, divers and snorkelers may stir up benthic sediment, potentially increasing sediment load for corals causing stress. As you already know, hard corals obtain a majority of their nutritional needs from their photosynthetic symbionts, zooxanthellae. Therefore, increased sedimentation can lead to reduced photosynthetic yield, loss of zooxanthellae, reduced calcification rates, and increased mortality in hard corals. Chronic sedimentation can adversely affect coral reefs by reducing hard coral coverage, reducing mean colony size, triggering bleaching events, and altering coral community composition. Sedimentation reduces coral recruitment by limiting the amount of hard substrate available for colonization. Chronic disturbances and stressors can cause significant damage to coral reefs.