Scuba diving is an incredibly popular sport, with an estimated 33 million dives taking place every year. However, just 15% of dive sites are fully protected from fishing and other destructive activities.

New peer-reviewed research has posited that better safeguarding of recreational dive spots, which cover less than 1% of the ocean, could unleash scuba diving’s potential as an economic engine to deliver benefits to tourists, local communities and marine life. Most notably, the study found that fully protected dive sites could generate $2 billion in direct diving revenue in communities where the dive sites are located, with another potential $2 billion in user fees paid by divers to the entities managing the reserves.

Photo: Sebastian Pena Lambarri

To derive these figures, researchers assembled a database of dive shops, dive sites and prices from thousands of locations worldwide to estimate the number of dives annually, the extent to which protection would increase biomass and biodiversity in an area, and divers’ willingness to pay access fees for diving in a marine protected area.

They found 67% of all dive sites are located within the boundaries of MPAs, however just 15% are within highly or fully protected areas. Next they determined that enforcing highly and fully protected MPAs within existing recreational diving locations would increase the demand for diving and the number of dives by 32% (or 10.5 million more dives per year) and dive industry revenue by $616 million annually.

A growing body of research shows that fully protected areas can help restore fish populations by 500% on average, yield bigger fish over time and help replenish fishing grounds around the MPAs because of the spillover of marine life.

The research calculated that the operation of additional MPAs (including enforcement) that total 1% of the global ocean would cost up to $1.2 billion and that scuba divers’ access fees could generate more than enough revenue to cover those costs. As a result, better protecting the areas frequented by scuba divers could not only help marine life recover, but also generate a new source of income for coastal economies.

Hosting around 62% of recreational dives, the Global South is poised to gain the most, underscoring the potential for dive tourism to support both marine conservation and local livelihoods in regions where such benefits are most needed.