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03/03/2026 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 03/03/2026 15:41

Effective Marine Protection Can More Than Triple Dive Tourism Revenue

Published Date

March 03, 2026

Article Content

Funding sustained, effective management of marine protected areas is one of ocean conservation's most stubborn problems. Now, a new study from researchers at UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography links fish recovery from well-managed marine protected areas to increased revenue from scuba diving tourism. The study, published Jan. 21 in the journal Ecological Economics, then translates those findings into a framework that creates financial projections to help managers or investors evaluate the potential economic benefits of marine conservation.

The analysis uses fish biomass, which is already tracked at many sites worldwide, as a standard indicator of ecosystem health. First, the researchers looked at fish biomass and dive pricing at 23 sites from three ocean regions, finding a positive correlation. Next, the team incorporated data from Cabo Pulmo National Park in Mexico, where fish populations have recovered under strong protection, and established a positive relationship between ecosystem recovery and the number of divers visiting the site over time.

Based on these two relationships and fish recovery trajectories from the ecological literature, the researchers developed a framework to project scuba diving tourism revenue over time under different levels of protection. The projections showed that protected dive sites could see revenue increases of up to 252% over a decade, but only if the protections are strong and effective. Areas with protected status but weak enforcement showed declining revenues over the same period because fish populations continued to deteriorate.

The framework is designed to be adapted to individual sites. Managers can input local fish biomass measurements, baseline dive prices and enforcement costs to generate site-specific projections for return-on-investment estimates and payback timelines. The authors suggest the framework could also help structure conservation finance instruments, such as bonds with repayment tied to verified ecological benchmarks. While the study focuses on dive tourism, the core logic - linking a measurable ecological variable to a non-extractive economic activity it supports - has potential applications wherever livelihoods depend on ecosystem health.

The study was led by Fabio Favoretto, who completed postdoctoral research at Scripps and is now a lecturer at the University of Plymouth, and co-authored by Matthew J. Forrest and Octavio Aburto-Oropeza of Scripps. The research was supported by the National Geographic Society, the Mary Jameson Foundation, the Paul Angel Foundation, and Pristine Seas-National Geographic.

Read the study: Operationalizing nature recovery to market outcomes

Photo credit: Octavio Aburto-Oropeza
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