TY - JOUR
T1 - Multi-year impacts of ecotourism on whale shark (Rhincodon typus) visitation at Ningaloo Reef, Western Australia
AU - Sanzogni, Rob
AU - Meekan, Mark
AU - Meeuwig, Jessica
PY - 2015
Y1 - 2015
N2 - © 2015 Sanzogni et al. In-water viewing of sharks by tourists has become a popular and lucrative industry. There is some concern that interactions with tourists with ecotourism operations might harm sharks through disruption of behaviours. Here, we analysed five years of whale shark (Rhincodon typus) encounter data by an ecotourism industry at Ningaloo Reef,Western Australia, to assess the impact of ecotourisminteractions on shark visitation, within the context of the biological and physical oceanography of the region. Our data base consisted of 2823 encounter records for 951 individual whale sharks collected by ecotourismoperators between 2007 and 2011.We found that total encounters per whale shark and encounters per boat trip increased through time. On average, whale sharks re-encountered in subsequent years were encountered earlier, stayed longer and tended to be encounteredmore often within a season than sharks that were only encountered in a single year. Sequential comparisons between years did not show any patterns consistent with disturbance and the rate of departure of whale sharks from the aggregation was negatively correlated to the number of operator trips. Overall, our analysis of thismulti-year data base found no evidence that interactions with tourists affected the likelihood of whale shark re-encounters and that instead, physical and biological environmental factors had a far greater influence on whale shark visitation rates. Our approach provides a template for assessing the effects of ecotourism interactions and environmental factors on the visitation patterns ofmarinemegafauna over multiple years. Copyright:
AB - © 2015 Sanzogni et al. In-water viewing of sharks by tourists has become a popular and lucrative industry. There is some concern that interactions with tourists with ecotourism operations might harm sharks through disruption of behaviours. Here, we analysed five years of whale shark (Rhincodon typus) encounter data by an ecotourism industry at Ningaloo Reef,Western Australia, to assess the impact of ecotourisminteractions on shark visitation, within the context of the biological and physical oceanography of the region. Our data base consisted of 2823 encounter records for 951 individual whale sharks collected by ecotourismoperators between 2007 and 2011.We found that total encounters per whale shark and encounters per boat trip increased through time. On average, whale sharks re-encountered in subsequent years were encountered earlier, stayed longer and tended to be encounteredmore often within a season than sharks that were only encountered in a single year. Sequential comparisons between years did not show any patterns consistent with disturbance and the rate of departure of whale sharks from the aggregation was negatively correlated to the number of operator trips. Overall, our analysis of thismulti-year data base found no evidence that interactions with tourists affected the likelihood of whale shark re-encounters and that instead, physical and biological environmental factors had a far greater influence on whale shark visitation rates. Our approach provides a template for assessing the effects of ecotourism interactions and environmental factors on the visitation patterns ofmarinemegafauna over multiple years. Copyright:
U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0127345
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0127345
M3 - Article
C2 - 26398338
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 10
SP - 1
EP - 18
JO - PLoS One
JF - PLoS One
IS - 9
ER -
