James Catlin

Balancing commercial and environmental needs: licensing as a means of managing whale shark tourism on Ningaloo reef

This paper explores the creation, significance and progression of the licensing systems employed to regulate whale shark tourism at Ningaloo Marine Park. Since 1993 mandatory whale shark tour operator licences have been offered through an evolving competitive tender process. A content analysis of the evolution of licence requirements revealed a progression from a minimalist approach to one covering a full range of detailed and audited sustainability indicators. A tour operators’ opinion survey was undertaken to understand industry issues and the impacts of the regulatory licensing system. Operators cited the need for business planning and offering a quality experience as their main challenges. Issues included cost pressures from local and global competitors. Few saw their own activities as being an environmental issue, and few saw regulation procedures as an issue. It is argued that further refinement of the licensing system is required to put its operations into a transparent, science-based context, and to offer incentives for improvements to rise above basic compliance. An explicit consideration of the balance between environmental regulation and commercial sustainability is needed to create a situation of perpetual improvement and provide best outcomes for all stakeholders, including operators, the local economy, the environment and guests.

Discovering wildlife tourism: a whale shark tourism case study

This paper investigates the different sources of information used by tourists to learn about a particular wildlife tourism activity, specifically, whale shark tourism at Ningaloo Marine Park in Western Australia. The findings from this research concur with previous studies of wildlife tourism showing that wildlife tourism operations are reliant on more informal and general forms of promotion, in particular word of mouth and guide books. Conversely, more deliberate marketing mechanisms, such as the internet and documentaries, are not extensively utilised. To disaggregate consumer preferences for various information sources, this article segments the population into more homogenous groups, thereby demonstrating distinct differences in the choice of information source based on the participants’ normal place of residence.

White sharks in Western Australia: threat or opportunity?

This paper explores the Western Australian Governments decision to disallow white shark tourism operations within the State. This policy was made during a time of an unprecedented number of shark bite fatalities in the region. We argue that the Governments verdict was reactive due to this abnormality and did not take a balanced and considered approach. White sharks are an important key stone species with a high conservation value, but a particularly negative popular image. Therefore, we contend that dismissing the prospect of tourism also dismissed the prospect of creating a more realistic representation of the species. In addition, economic benefits to a regional area and research opportunities on the species were also lost.