Management in sensitive areas

Marine protected areas are usually designated with practical goals in mind such as the conservation of commercially valuable species. But designating marine protected areas can also help achieve sustainable development goals - such as ecotourism development - and improve the benefits of current uses. Reasons for designating a particular sensitive area a protected area include:

• The area is typical of an important ecosystem
• It shows a high species diversity
• It harbours endangered species and/or endemic species
• It provides reproduction, foraging and nursery habitat to a wide variety of commercially important species
• It is of important indigenous cultural value
• It is particularly sensitive to damage

< p align="justify">A system of protected areas is likely to be more successful and sustainable in the long run if co- ordinated with and Integrated Coastal Zone Management programme as a park's surrounding uses - agriculture, settlements etc - are likely to impact the protected area and thus need to be managed accordingly. IUCN has made a distinction in the following six categories of protected areas:

1. a. Strict Nature Reserve: protected area managed mainly for science b. Wilderness Area: protected area managed mainly for wilderness protection
2. National Park: protected area managed mainly for ecosystem protection and recreation
3. Natural Monument: protected area managed mainly for conservation of specific natural features
4. Habitat/Species Management Area: protected area managed mainly for conservation through management intervention
5. Protected Landscape/Seascape: protected area managed mainly for landscape/seascape conservation and recreation
6. Managed Resource Protected Area: protected area managed mainly for the sustainable use of natural ecosystems

Individual sensitive areas can be zoned in a number of protected areas varying from category I-VI depending on the fragility of the habitat and species diversity present. Such zoning pattern would enable popular tourism destination to control their ecotourism activities in particular places of conservation and preservation allowing conventional tourism to take place in different zones; thus effectively creating a grading of access controls to sensitive areas. Strict zoning should be applied within protected areas and it should also be extended outside of protected areas; in the case of some very small islands, it can be extended to the entire island. The Great Barrier Reef is a very good example of a protected area that is managed by an extensive system of zoning. Sumilon Island in the Philippines, is also a protected area that has been divided into a "core area" and peripheral areas designated for traditional uses.

A significant use of Marine Protected Areas is as an asset to support mostly marine-based tourism. In many countries, scuba diving is an important part of the marine based tourism industry and relies heavily on the use of MPAs for visitor satisfaction. Carrying capacity is often used as a management tool in the context of sustainability within the tourism industry. It refers to the maximum level of activity allowed within a particular environment and beyond which physical deterioration of the resource or damage to natural habitats will occur. Applying this concept in practise is fraught with difficulty, as it is rather tricky to prove the simple cause/effect correlation of human impact against biodiversity decline. As a consequence, actual carrying capacity will vary depending on the accepted level of change vis-à-vis (1) sustainability of environmental resources, (2) tourist satisfaction and (3) the level of socio-economic impact. Bonaire is popular tourism destination especially for individuals fond of diving. With a steady increase in the number of divers visiting the island, the Bonaire Marine Park Authority, which has been managing all of Bonaire's inshore waters since the early 1980s, was increasingly concerned about the long term sustainability of the industry and its impacts on reefs. A study comparing biodiversity at sites of varying "diver intensity" indicated that the percentage coral cover was significantly lower at the heavily dived sites compared to non-dived sites. The study also showed that there seems to be a critical level of site visitation (5000 dives per year) beyond which impact becomes significant and unacceptable. With 86 dive sites around the island the total carrying capacity for Bonaire was estimated at 387 000 dives per day, but due to differing site popularity a conservative estimate of 200 000 was set.