Synthesis

INTRODUCTION

Moving toward restorative habits and economies

Restoring ecosystem structure and function has become an urgent concern and one that has prompted international efforts (UN General Assembly 2017, Danovaro et al. 2021). This is one of the major challenges in modern ecology (Borja 2014). Marine and coastal habitats are subject to multiple and increasing anthropogenetic pressure and stressors. Destructive fishing practices, coastal development, pollution, coastal eutrophication, and climate change are among the main causes of biodiversity decline globally (Dobson et al. 2006, Bayraktarov et al. 2016, Duarte et al. 2020). Specifically, global coverage of mangroves has declined by more than 35% (Valiela et al. 2001), coral reefs by 19% (Wilkinson and Souter 2008), seagrass meadows are estimated to decline at a rate of 7% per year (Orth et al. 2006, Waycott et al. 2009), more than 99% of oyster reefs are considered functionally extinct (Beck et al. 2011), and high seas fish stocks have been depleted because of a lack of management and unsustainable fisheries (Meltzer 1994), as recently recognized by the United Nations (UN) High Seas Treaty (Gjerde et al. 2022). These processes of degradation and their outcomes have been recognized for decades and sustainability objectives such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have been designed and widely incorporated into national and international development and environmental management agendas as a result. However, these goals have not been met (Wesselink et al. 2011, Loorbach 2020). Reversing processes of degradation and their outcomes at all scales requires more than just sustainability; it requires restoration. From ecological, economic, and community perspectives, the challenge is to promote practices that do no harm and ideally contribute to both positive community development and restorative ecological outcomes.

Restoration is not a new idea. The UN defines ecosystem restoration as assisting in the recovery of degraded, damaged, and destroyed ecosystems to regain ecological functionality and provide the goods and services that people value, as well as conserving the ecosystems that are still intact (Society for Ecological Restoration International Science and Policy Working Group 2004, UN General Assembly 2017). This broad definition calls for societies at all scales to intervene directly in inducing recovery, as well as to abandon over-exploitative behavior and forge new restorative relations with environments (e.g., Gann et al. 2019, Barford and Ahmad 2021). Although some authors argue that researchers and policy makers should focus on narrower, more tightly focused, and context-specific definitions (Atkinson and Bonser 2020), the United Nations definition of restoration is helpfully broad. It spans the full spectrum of interventions, from passive stress relief measures (e.g., establishing all kinds of marine protected areas or marine restricted areas) to active habitat reconstruction (e.g., riparian planting, coral, shellfish, or kelp restoration). At different scales it also points to the value of interventions along a continuum from doing no more harm and avoiding and mitigating environmental damage to initiatives that actively alter damaged ecosystems depending on the degree of intervention required in any setting (Chazdon et al. 2021). This allows for approaches that prioritize and work with natural regeneration wherever it is possible (Gann et al. 2019). The open definition is also helpful in embracing interventions that run along continua from specific and targeted to general and ecosystem wide, and from technical to social (Li 2007). It helps researchers, policy makers, communities, and other actors to recognize and respond to context specificity and the inevitable politics of restoration (Li 2007), including incorporating Indigenous knowledge and forms of environmental management (Bambridge 2016). In this paper we use the distinction between active and passive forms of restoration as drawn by the “International principles and standards for the practice of ecological restoration” (Gann et al. 2019) because it is particularly helpful in the context of ecotourism, especially that of diving and its connection to marine protected areas (MPAs). This is not to reject other ways of narrowing the scope of restoration, but to assist heuristically in distinguishing between classes of restorative practices in our case. In what follows, passive restoration therefore refers to natural regeneration of habitats after cessation of certain types of degradation and is appropriate where the damage is relatively low or where time and nearby populations allow recolonization (Prach et al. 2014, Chazdon and Guariguata 2016). Active restoration requires interventions to trigger biotic recovery, including building habitat features (O'Beirn et al. 2000), controlling invasive species (Saunders and Norton 2001), and the reintroduction of depleted populations.

Although the COVID-19 pandemic had a huge impact on local and global economies, it also presented an opportunity to reinvent business practices and operations and has, for a brief period at least, given restoration a new currency (Everingham and Chassagne 2020). With climate change also dominating social experience and political debates at multiple scales, finding ways to encourage and mobilize collective action to address restoration goals emerged as a pivotal challenge. One response has been to turn to the idea of restorative economies (Morseletto 2020). The concept of restorative economies aims to go beyond notions of sustainability by prioritizing agency and actively seeking to enhance the biodiversity and health of degraded ecosystems (Morseletto 2020). The primary challenge for restorative economies lies in promoting practices that not only avoid causing harm but also actively produce positive community development and ecological outcomes. The idea appeals to two pivotal shifts in thinking: an accent on restoration over limiting further damage to environments; and an active recognition of the investment required to restore ecosystem functioning.

In this paper, we propose the concept of restorative marine ecotourism (RME) as a platform for coupling marine ecotourism operations and marine restoration initiatives that deliver benefits to both the environment and the hosting communities. In this way, we attach a third, complementary shift in thinking about society-environment relations to the notion of restoration economies: the engagement and active participation of communities in environmental management, governance, and restorative action. This shift toward community participation and environmental governance has been widely advocated as basis for ecological restoration (e.g., Le Heron et al. 2016), even if it is still far from being embedded in actual decision-making processes (Wesselink et al. 2011). We thus see in RME opportunities to foster community development as well as couple business-based tourism activities and ecological restoration. These opportunities include generating funds for conservation programs, improving the quality of destination environments, supporting environmental stewardship, generating community dividends from economic success, and fostering social and cultural regeneration of coastal communities (Garrod and Wilson 2003). A restorative focus promises in turn to improve tourism experiences and help conserve the natural resources upon which both tourism and other economic activities rely (Garrod and Wilson 2003).

Ecotourism was first conceived in the late 1980s as a sustainable alternative to large-scale tourism with a questionable environmental record (Stronza et al. 2019). Ecotourism was seen instead as characterized by sustainable management, tourist education, delivering benefits to both communities and marine environments, and supporting marine conservation efforts (Garrod and Wilson 2003). Expectations for ecotourism were high. It was promoted as tourism that would help to achieve community development while protecting the environment (Brandon and Wells 1992). Critical scholars, however, quickly came to question whether ecotourism was delivering on these expectations, or whether it could ever do so (e.g., Wheeller 1994, Kiss 2004, Fletcher and Neves 2012). Some highlighted the way that ecotourism tended to create interest in sensitive sites and establish footholds for later mass-tourism (Weaver 2001), while others questioned whether it really did deliver on its environmental or community promises (Butcher 2005). Others argued that ecotourism lacked an institutional or active management structure that might guide activities such as planning procedures or certification regimes (Kennedy et al. 2013). However, distinguishing between marine ecotourism and other marine-based tourism sectors is essential to avoid misinterpretations that can undermine its potential for conservation efforts (Cater and Cater 2007).

In what follows, we propose RME as a form of ecotourism that overcomes these problems by actively supporting marine conservation efforts that direct attention to coordinated responses, social-ecological relations, environmental education, and community development. As yet, the literature offers little guidance on the key social-ecological relationships involved or how restoration economies might be implemented in marine environments (Blangy and Mehta 2006). We assert that addressing this gap and exploring the interface between ecological restoration and marine ecotourism is crucial, not only for advancing our understanding of the relations between ecological restoration and marine ecotourism, but also for fostering environmental justice in coastal communities. We argue that emphasizing the practical applications of RME will help communities and environmental advocates pursue solution-focused objectives consistent with “ocean optimism” (Knowlton 2021, Borja et al. 2022) and the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (UNDOS 2021-2030). We ask how best to identify strategies that can promote equitable distribution of environmental risks and benefits and encourage win-win outcomes for marine restoration, marine ecotourism operators, and local communities. We focus particular attention on the possibilities of RME led by diving enterprises.

DOCUMENTING REASONS FOR SUCCESS

Restorative tourism

To date there have been few examples of restorative tourism initiatives in marine settings and their potential social-ecological benefits have yet to be evaluated. Research in terrestrial environments, however, suggests that ecotourism can contribute positively to ecological restoration programs (France 2016, Danovaro et al. 2021). Blangy and Mehta (2006), for example, highlight the value of ecotourism to ecological restoration programs and identify opportunities to incorporate ecological restoration into ecotourism planning. They focus on ecolodges, low-impact nature-based tourist accommodation that commits to social and environmental sustainability, benefits local communities, and offers tourists an interpretative and participatory engagement with nature and culture (Mehta 2007). Ecolodge owners have developed reforestation and restocking programs and developed passive restoration strategies (Blangy and Mehta 2006). Ecolodges and other ecotourism initiatives are being interpreted as platforms for ecological restoration by environmental enterprises, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), development planners, and Indigenous communities alike. Although they have yet to develop formal certification programs that incorporate restoration into their schemes for either destinations or operators, certification institutions such as the Earthwatch Institute are beginning to recognize restoration tourism. The Earthwatch expeditions to the Peruvian rainforest to monitor native parrots in collaboration with local researchers are an example that integrates the mutual benefits of biodiversity enhancement, community development, and tourism (from attracting niche tourists to destination marketing and tourism management; Brightsmith et al. 2008). In this example, all parties benefited financially: over a period of six years the research received > $400,000 in cash, goods, and services, Earthwatch retained $387,000 in volunteer fees, and Rainforest Expeditions received nearly $300,000 in gross income.

Studies of restorative tourism on land have demonstrated how nature restoration and community driven initiatives can help to realize development goals by extending ecotourism into terrestrial regional and national parks and trails and poorer communities and regions (Campbell-Hunt 2014, Martinis et al. 2015, Hakim et al. 2018, Clark and Nyaupane 2022). Although marine restoration efforts are commonly more costly and marine ecosystems pose the added technological and logistical challenges of operating underwater (Bayraktarov et al. 2016) and are affected by the “out of sight, out of mind” syndrome (Raffaelli et al. 2005, Riera et al. 2014), they promise to have similar effects and to bring restoration economies much closer to marine tourism hotspots. Alongside efforts in conservation areas, volunteer and conservation tourism initiatives have become increasingly popular among marine and coastal tourism operators, especially in the SCUBA diving industry through citizen science (CS; e.g., Cerrano et al. 2017, Hesley et al. 2017, Hermoso et al. 2021). A key challenge in supporting and extending these initiatives is to develop strategies and institutional arrangements that coordinate efforts across diverse actors, from marine scientists to government officials, community members, and tourism businesses (Borja et al. 2022).

Coordination and scale

Documenting the success of RME initiatives, building RME programs, and coordinating actors comes with the challenge of scale, and often dealing with social and ecological imperatives and opportunities at different scales. From an ecological perspective, the scale at which restorative interventions are implemented can influence restoration success. For example, in active restoration interventions that require planting, such as seagrass restoration, large-scale planting increases the success rate by ensuring the spread of risks, overcoming high natural variability, and enhancing growth self-sustaining feedback (van Katwijk et al. 2016). Although the practical knowledge for larger scale interventions is often unavailable, large well-planned and well-managed marine reserves or protected areas (or networks of marine reserves) have been shown to be more effective than smaller ones. They are more likely to encompass entire ecosystems, protect links to adjacent ecosystems, offer greater protection to migratory and highly mobile species, and minimize uncertainty where little is known about a specific dynamic (Toonen et al. 2013).

Upscaling, of course, is no panacea. Both social organization and the functioning of natural ecosystems are bound in complex scalar processes, which commonly operate at different scales. Finding the scales at which to organize RME or attempting to upscale existing initiatives will require careful rethinking of relations among the elements and actors (human and non-human) of any initiative (Tsing 2012). Specific social, ecological, and social-ecological contexts are crucial. So too are temporal processes. This is particularly the case when dealing with Indigenous territories, resources, and communities, where on the one hand small scale RME programs invite Indigenous participation and safeguard local Indigenous environmental stewardship, but on the other hand large-scale conservation initiatives have compelled nations to address and negotiate questions of sovereignty (Leenhardt et al. 2013). Approaches to RME that incorporate Indigenous perspectives and participation are more likely to achieve their goals (Le Heron et al. 2019). Although we emphasize the benefits of upscaling initiatives to ecosystem scales from an ecological perspective, we emphasize that conditions for successful restoration and RME initiatives will vary in different social, political, temporal, and ecological contexts and that there is much to be gained by and learned from small-scale, short-term projects (Gillies et al. 2015).

Tourism and conservation

Conservation studies have traditionally tended to focus on the negative impact of tourism or ecotourism on a community, target species, or habitat (Trave et al. 2017, Stronza et al. 2019). Forms of tourism that build restoration into the heart of the tourism experience promise more positive outcomes. In analyzing the Oslob Whale Sharks project in the Philippines, Lowe et al. (2019), describe a restorative tourism initiative that integrates coastal management and sustainable dive tourism. Despite the 1998 Wildlife Resources Conservation and Protection Act to protect whale sharks in the Philippines, whale sharks continued to be caught illegally. In 2011, fishers from the village of Tan-Wan started to provide whale sharks with shrimps to generate tourism flow. They never received external funding, but the initiative was so successful that the following year Tan-Wan fishers formed a cooperative of fishermen and sea wardens in partnership with the village major and captain. Since then, the cooperative fishers transport divers and snorkelers from the shore to watch and dive with whale sharks. The number of visitors increased by 393% from 2012 to 2016, creating alternative livelihoods for 177 fishers and their families and doubling their income. The Oslob Whale Shark project created legal frameworks for conservation and is documented to be one of the most successful marine alternative livelihoods projects in the world. More studies like this are required to see the potential for RME. We believe that ecotourism presents the ideal ground to integrate social, ecological, and economic priorities and move toward restorative practices, in terms of developing the core principles, necessary skills, equipment and infrastructure.

Normalizing RME initiatives as common practice is an ambitious goal. Achieving it will require innovative thinking and action, new forms of collaboration, novel investment propositions, and the production of fit-for-purpose science. Investing time and effort in restoration as a COVID-19 response has yielded a rich set of dividends for several tourism operators around the globe. Several dive centers, for example, started restoration and reef monitoring programs (e.g., Gilmour 2020, Helmy 2020, Pelliccia 2022). These self-driven initiatives have offered a glimpse of the business possibilities of restoration, from enhancing the natural world that attracts tourists to yielding new income flows, diversifying tourism products, reducing the impact of seasonality, providing green jobs, strengthening community relations, and giving credence to claims of sustainable experiences. The examples point to possibilities to tackle two of the major challenges hindering marine ecosystem restoration: extending impact by replicating initiatives and/or upscaling (Danovaro et al. 2021) and integrating social and ecological restoration priorities (Abelson et al. 2020).

RESTORATIVE INVESTMENTS

One crucial issue that impedes decisions on whether and how much to restore is the upfront cost of marine ecosystem restoration and ongoing monitoring costs (Bayraktarov et al. 2016). Although the costs of coastal marine restoration are challenging to parameterize, pilot studies suggest that, while it is generally preferable to protect intact habitats rather than to restore degraded habitats, there are clear instances where active restoration is the most appropriate and cost-effective action (Society for Ecological Restoration International Science and Policy Working Group 2004, Saunders et al. 2020, Evans and Thrush 2023). The cost for marine coastal restoration projects is generally more expensive than restoring terrestrial habitats. Costs depend on local cost structures, the ecosystem in question, and the restoration technique applied (Bayraktarov et al. 2016). Bayraktarov et al. (2016) estimate that average costs for active restoration of one hectare of marine coastal habitat is US$150,000–400,000/ha, with coral reefs more expensive (US$207,247/ha) and mangroves less so (US$52,006/ha), probably because of the high number of community-based and volunteer-based projects that can access shallow sublittoral habitats. Scaling-up can make restoration cheaper on a per hectare basis and may reduce failure rates (van Katwijk et al. 2016), but most marine projects are small in geographical and temporal scale, reflecting limited funding sources and developing methodologies (Bayraktarov et al. 2016). The promise of RME is to capture investment from a wider range of economic actors by highlighting mutually beneficial outcomes. These may include partnerships among governments, private businesses, communities, or NGOs (Murtough et al. 2002). Increasingly, various environmentally driven intermediaries (e.g., philanthropists, green investment funds, and pension funds) are seeking to complement these sources of funding by attracting different forms of green investors into restoration economies, including Indigenous groups looking to restore their environments to meet cultural obligations (BenDor et al. 2015). Here, the promise is of a range of different returns on natural, social, and cultural capital, as well as financial capital, which in turn requires monitoring and measuring the ecological and social effects of restoration.

One of the core principles of ecotourism is to support conservation efforts (Garrod and Wilson 2003). Marine ecotourism can help to buffer restoration costs in more than one way. First, projects that are community- or volunteer-based, or that target sites with relatively easy access, usually have lower costs (Bayraktarov et al. 2016). Second, marine ecotourism is considered a high-value economic activity (Hunt et al. 2015, Ressurreição et al. 2022), and as such wealthy tourists and higher priced experiences can generate funding for restoration programs. This form of tourism also depends on maintaining the exclusivity of the tourism experience and can thus also help to replace ecologically damaging forms of mass tourism. With an accent on local employment and rehabilitating culturally and environmentally important habitats, marine ecotourism can contribute to economic prosperity and environmental well-being in coastal communities. Regardless of where the funds come from, restorative investments create jobs while directly addressing essential ecological objectives. Edwards et al. (2013) showed that marine restorative investments across the USA generated an average of 17 green jobs per million dollars spent. Although many of these jobs are temporary because of the nature of the investments, initiatives have stimulated sustainable fisheries and coastal tourism, as well as habitat restoration and long-lasting benefits, such as improved water quality. The results suggest that coastal habitat restoration projects far outperform resource extraction industries in terms of their local development impact.

Although not always the case (e.g., Leposa 2020), many examples of successful RME are underpinned by MPAs (e.g., Sala et al. 2013, Viana et al. 2017, Mangubhai et al. 2020). The literature speaks of mutual benefits in terms of restored biodiversity economic benefits, such as fisheries recruitment, ecosystem services, and ecotourism opportunities. Direct mutual benefits include financing conservation through ecotourism incomes and user fees, and creating tourism products, such as diving and destination marketing through marine reserve establishment (Sala et al. 2013, Viana et al. 2017). The lack of studies on investments in marine restorative actions might be linked to the fact that, while in many countries passive restoration is institutionalized (e.g., MPAs), active restoration still requires governance uptake and thus tends to rely on bottom-up approaches to restoration policies and investments (van Tatenhove et al. 2021). Other forms of marine reserves or cultural restrictions on marine resources use (e.g., Hoffmann 2002) can involve different forms of investment and more active forms of restoration. Mangubhai et al. (2020), for example, describes several types of “Marine Conservation Agreements” between tourism operators and Indigenous, resource owning communities in Fiji, and their contribution to biodiversity conservation and coastal management as an example of alternative restorative incentives to stakeholders. As in Fiji direct payments are not always appropriate, benefits and incentives are interchangeable and are considered a form of compensation to the ecosystem service providers. Incentive schemes for conservation include monetary incentives, in-kind payment (e.g., goods and capacity building), new community opportunities, and financial support. These types of conservation agreements and compensations have parallels in the “community development agreements” used in the mining industry (e.g., O'Faircheallaigh 2013, Levacher and Le Meur 2022). Although one involves win-lose trade-offs and the other involves win-win benefits, both point to the importance of Indigenous tenure arrangements, the importance of trust-based relationships and negotiating community development agreements for commandeering nature for external benefits, and the challenges associated with achieving effective and just outcomes in the context of often extreme power imbalances (O'Faircheallaigh 2013). One such challenge is that of confronting Indigenous claims to a marine tenure that is often assumed to lie in the commons or to be available for market appropriation (Sloan and Chand 2016).

CROSS-SECTOR COLLABORATIONS

The sections above suggest that successful RME will depend on the assemblage of multiple economic and community actors as well as financial and scientific experts (Danovaro et al. 2021). This includes ensuring the participation of the local community and governmental agencies (e.g., Pomeroy and Carlos 1996, Le Heron et al. 2019), which means building enduring collaborations, the form of which will always be context specific. On land, there are documented examples of long-term, mutually beneficial partnerships among conservation scientists, ecotourism agencies, NGOs, and local communities (e.g., Brightsmith et al. 2008). More recently, similar studies are starting to emerge for marine ecosystems and marine ecotourism (Howlett et al. 2022). In the context of dive tourism in New South Wales, Australia, for example, Hammerton et al. (2012) describe two cases where dive operators acted as an interface between marine scientists and the broader community through marine education and conservation initiatives. Commercial operators collaborated with researchers to train divers who subsequently became interested in marine conservation. These Australian cases document how long-term collaboration among stakeholders benefited both diving destinations and contributed to marine conservation. Many factors underpinned the collaborations and their success, including continuous government funding, ongoing guidance for data collection from academic staff, skilled divers mentoring new divers, and strong local community and local government environmental stewardship. The collaborations were built on shared motivation to maintain the high quality of local marine habitats, a circulation of finance, knowledge, and capacity building among the partners, and investing in local infrastructure. Using funding to pay for dive expenses and facilities was a key feature around which the assemblage cohered (see in another case Lucrezi et al. 2019).

In the case of remote coastal communities, such as Small Island Developing States, support for RME can be built around local community development wins. Communities clearly grasp the need to achieve a balance between preserving marine biodiversity and utilizing marine resources for both community needs and tourism (Hampton and Jeyacheya 2020). Here the vulnerability of local environments is becoming increasingly apparent. Local employment and opportunities for local entrepreneurialism can provide the basis for capacity-building participation, win-win RME, and meaningful collaborations. Hein et al. (2019) showed how local communities in the Maldives are more receptive to restorative outcomes in areas where locals are employed by the tourism industry to work with restoration projects. Employing locals can provide economic benefit, while simultaneously fostering community participation in restorative practices (Masud et al. 2017). The nexus between environmental knowledge and ecotourism practices puts collaboration among different actors and community segments at its core.

In more widely cited cases, marine reserves sit at the core of mutual benefit construction (e.g., Sala et al. 2013, Viana et al. 2017, Mangubhai et al. 2020). Mobilizing their potential, however, requires action. The relations between tourism and ecological goals in marine reserves must be managed effectively to ensure that different benefits remain aligned (Leposa 2020, Carvache-Franco et al. 2022). Support for marine reserves often comes from local communities and can be skillfully diverted into the creation of community-based MPAs or linked to Indigenous forms of marine protection (Christie et al. 2002, Smallhorn-West et al. 2019). Hoffmann (2002), for example, points to the setting of a community driven raʻui to protect the fringing reef in Rarotonga (Cook Islands). Raʻui are restrictions placed on resource use by the Indigenous people of the South Pacific and are applied in contemporary times to an area or a specific resource by the traditional environmental guardians of an area (Bambridge 2016). In 1998, with the support of the government, local communities imposed a raʻui that completely banned fishing or collecting of any marine life from 14% of the lagoon across five different areas. Extending from the high-water mark to a depth of 30 meters, it still allowed recreational use for nonmotorized activities such as snorkeling and surfing. Community wardens were appointed to enforce the restriction and were tasked with assessing the marine resource stocks to determine their rate of recovery with the aid of the Ministry of Marine Resources. Backed by diverse community members, traditional authorities, the Ministry of Marine Resources, WWF, the New Zealand Overseas Development Agency, local businesses, schools, and the Church, the initiative illustrates how Indigenous approaches to human-environment relationships and the idea of restoration can be successfully aligned with contemporary institutions and social actors. The raʻui protected communities from eating ciguatoxic lagoon fish (the reason why community members and health authorities were keen to establish the raʻui and why community and commercial fishers accepted it), improved coral diversity and consequently reef health, and supported a rebound in the population of reef fish. The raʻui also directly supported tourism, the predominant economic base of the Cook Islands economy. It enhanced tourist experiences, allowed for positive claims about tourism sustainability, and fostered new ecotourism activities centered on the raʻui as a point of interest.

The Cook Island raʻui illustrates how traditional marine governance institutions offer a model for restorative approaches to resource management. Mutual benefits and win-win outcomes stretched from community health and development to national tourism income, ecological restoration, and rejuvenation of Indigenous knowledge and traditions (Prasetyo et al. 2020). This case shows how multi-actor collaboration can be fostered and community support can be built for ecologically and socially flexible resource management interventions through culturally sanctioned actions (Hoffmann 2002). It suggests that community supported interventions may work in a range of settings to assemble local people, government, international organizations, and tourism businesses into productive collaborations to support RME. It also highlights the value of citizen science as an RME initiative.

REALIZING THE POTENTIAL OF MARINE CITIZEN SCIENCE

The engagement of volunteer groups in science and activities of environmental monitoring, also referred to as participatory or citizen science, has become an established practice in a number of projects and disciplines (e.g., Cohn 2008, Cerrano et al. 2017). Although the reliability of tasks performed and data collected by non-specialist volunteers has been questioned (Greenwood 1994), many studies highlight the potential of CS projects to fund scientific activities through voluntary labor, socialization of environmental knowledge, and scaling-up conservation/restoration effort, especially when volunteers are guided by experts (e.g., Foster-Smith and Evans 2003, Cerrano et al. 2017, Howlett et al. 2022). The incorporation of conservation initiatives into ecotourism is being seen as a space ripe for developing CS in marine areas (e.g., Cerrano et al. 2017, Hermoso et al. 2021). Yet realizing its potential value to generate restorative outcomes or new marine tourism experiences remains largely untapped by operators, scientists, and development agencies alike (Schaffer and Tham 2020). Ecotourism operators and staff can play a key role in longitudinal research, establishing continuity for conservation projects (Brightsmith et al. 2008), offering up valuable interpretative experiences for tourists, and allowing multiple stakeholders to benefit from restoration (Wiener et al. 2009). Importantly, when restorative actions take place within the ecotourism business, they come from stakeholders that directly benefit from the restored marine environments, which also leads to socioeconomic benefits. Collaborations among ecotourist citizen scientists and community and business stakeholders can enable local communities to make consensual and evidence-based decisions (Freiwald et al. 2018). Ecotourism-based marine CS projects have been shown to raise public interest in ecological degradation and restoration initiatives, cultivate a culture of ecological action (e.g., Shirk et al. 2012, Cerrano et al. 2017), and generate monitoring data on marine species or habitats that will support research institutions and coastal managers to develop wider conservation planning initiatives (Ellis 2003, Freiwald et al. 2018).

One example of successful CS in marine restoration is the Coral Nurture Program, which implemented coral propagation via nurseries and out-planting practices across high-value tourism sites in Far North Queensland, Australia from 2018 to 2020 (Howlett et al. 2022). The Program worked with five tourism operators already engaged in stewardship activities, and each operator integrated different stages of the restoration project into their routine tourism practices and used tourists to complete Program tasks, making their customers citizen scientists. The Program resulted in the establishment of 72 coral nurseries and out-planting of 21,020 coral fragments from 29 different species. Some of the factors driving this success include complimentary expertise and research to guide objective improvement, regular partner meetings, and flexibility in workflow to suit business preferences and schedule. Interestingly, when the project was challenged by tourism and operations disruptions due to COVID-19 lockdowns, operators would themselves invest or seek external funding to run vessels for non-tourism restoration days, which also enabled retention of trained staff.

Dive businesses are becoming central to marine ecotourism initiatives that pursue both restorative ecological and community development goals and are also adopting and adapting CS programs into their business models (e.g., Cerrano et al. 2017, Hesley et al. 2017). Existing diving-based initiatives are often composed of a mix of passive restoration (e.g., support for marine protected areas) and active restoration (e.g., restoring habitats as core activities of the enterprise). Recent studies have also identified recreational divers as key contributors to CS projects as they show an active interest in marine environments and a willingness to be involved in restoration and monitoring programs (Lucrezi 2021). Some of the reasons driving divers’ involvement in marine CS are the desire to help with conservation efforts, personal gratification linked to the love for the ocean and diving, the desire to support environmental science and improve personal knowledge and awareness of the marine environment, and attachment to a place (e.g., Cerrano et al. 2017, Hermoso et al. 2021, Lucrezi 2021). International diving agencies issue conservation certifications for diving specialties relating to environmental awareness and marine conservation (e.g., PADI Coral Restoration, or SSI Marine Ecology). Many of the biggest diving agencies have developed their own international marine conservation projects, into which local diving centers can enroll (e.g., PADI Project AWARE, SSI Blue Oceans, GUE Project Baseline; https://www.padi.com/aware, https://www.divessi.com/en/get-certified/environment/blue-oceans, https://projectbaseline.org/). Dive businesses are also adopting and adapting CS programs created by non-profit organizations. Examples such as the Reef Check Foundation and CoralWatch allow divers to take an active part in conservation science. Some initiatives also provide visitors with the possibility of “adopting” a dive site, a beach, a wreck, a coral transplant, and so on (e.g., https://coralgardeners.org/). These early examples and the growing interest in combining tourism experiences with restorative activities suggest that marine ecotourism offers a pathway to marine restoration and coastal community development.

One of the challenges in promoting CS is to ensure that the data is valuable and usable because restoration protocols are still experimental for many intertidal and subtidal habitats (Bayraktarov et al. 2020). Effective protocols and RME strategies will depend on the type of marine ecosystems involved, the social backgrounds of the citizen scientists and the hosting area, the costs associated with restorative actions, and the nature of the tourism operation in question (see Fig. 1). In California, for example, the National Marine Sanctuaries’ Long-term Monitoring Program and Experiential Training for Students established protocols that allowed for the involvement of 5000 middle and high school students per year to monitor the rocky and sandy littoral at 68 sites within the state (Freiwald et al. 2018). Although the efficacy of the data collected was restricted by training limitations, it had enormous educational value for the students, who were introduced to coastal environments. In the case of the well-studied example of coral restoration, Ladd et al. (2018) suggest that it is important to collect data on density, diversity, and identity of transplanted corals, site selection, and transplant design. For shellfish reef restoration, recently published guidelines suggest that restoration projects should address shellfish recruitment, substrate type and limitation at the site, physical conditions, the provenance of the shellfish to be transplanted, and possibility of disease (Fitzsimons et al. 2019). The specific species of shellfish to be restored will also be important. In the case of green-lipped mussels (Perna canaliculus) in New Zealand, for instance, other key factors include seasonality, water clarity, and predator abundance (Alder et al. 2022, Roberts et al. 2023). Restoration of subtidal habitats requires specific gear and skill sets, likely the sole preserve of dive operators among marine ecotourism businesses, whereas intertidal habitats (e.g., wetlands, seagrass, mangroves) are accessible to a wider range of stakeholders. Divers, kayakers, whale watchers, environmentally educated and motivated tour groups, local community groups, and school students will in turn have different resources and capacities to collect these different data, and with differing degrees of rigor.

CONCLUSIONS

Time is running out to restore the structure and functions of many marine ecosystems. We need a new approach to economic development and innovative solution-oriented tools that support the management of complex social-ecological relations and measure up to the major challenges of ecological restoration. By opening a discussion about restorative marine ecotourism, we direct attention to aligning restorative practices and economic opportunities in diverse marine spaces. We argue that a better understanding of the potential synergies between marine ecotourism and restoration ecology is an important starting point for restoration initiatives that align approaches to addressing ecological challenges with social and ecological priorities (Abelson et al. 2020, Danovaro et al. 2021). The examples of growing interest in combining tourism experiences with restorative activities outlined in this paper suggest that RME is one way to align marine restoration with a coastal community development that fosters diverse livelihoods (Lowe et al. 2019). The examples we cite emphasize the importance of flexible approaches to restoration and a diversity of restorative interventions, including drawing on Indigenous knowledge and environmental management practices.

Terrestrial examples of restorative tourism and initial attempts to foster RME in the diving industry encourage us to take the next steps of asking what can be done to extend the early successes in RME. We propose four starting points: (a) documenting reasons for the success of restoration and RME initiatives as a basis for exploring future solutions (Lowe et al. 2019, Borja et al. 2022); (b) working with investment intermediaries to produce the knowledge necessary to encourage restorative investments (Cortés Acosta et al. 2021); (c) fostering cross-sector collaborations among restoration scientists, resource management agencies, local communities, and ecotourism operators; and (d) promoting citizen science as a way of measuring and demonstrating the value of RME, both by drawing on and deepening the sense of connection with the ocean through hands-on experiences and engagement and developing appropriate context-specific restoration protocols (e.g., Haywood et al. 2016, Hein et al. 2019). Each of these starting points emphasizes the importance of aligning both social and ecological priorities (Fig. 1). Restoration goals must be aligned with concern for both community and ecological justice. Social-ecological science can help to develop the innovative tools and strengthen the relationships and collaborations among communities, authorities, businesses, environmental organizations, and knowledge makers necessary to make progress.

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