Scientific Services

What does “provisioning” mean? It turns out it is often misused when discussing marine wildlife tourism. This paper proposes a new framework and language to describe the type of attractant used in common tourism operations. Studies focused on wildlife tourism are increasing, but the words used to describe the attractant can be confusing.

For example, in the white shark cage diving industry, “provisioning” can be used to describe feeding, chumming (no feeding) and using decoys. There are also discrepancies between terms used in the literature and on wildlife tourism websites where the type of attractant is often undisclosed. We propose a new, more descriptive and explicit terminology to reclassify provisioning into “feeding”, “attracting”, and “modifying habitat”, providing eight specific terms that reflect:

1. if the stimulus exploits wildlife appetite or search for preferred habitat;
2. the nature of the attractant (consumable or not);
3. the intention of the activity if using consumable attractants (direct, indirect, or incidental feeding) or modified habitat (intentional or repurposed modification); and
4. which species are affected by the activity (target or non-target species).

Once we applied this new terminology to tourism sites, new practices in tourism emerged and showcased how non-target species can also be affected by the attractant. Clarifying the language describing these wildlife interactions ensures they can be accurately described in the scientific literature. In turn, this will help resource managers and industry groups systematically assess these diverse activities.

The lights of a tour boat in the Maldives attract swarms of zooplankton. This zooplankton, in turn, attracts giant whale sharks, which feed on the zooplankton. Thus, the boat lights facilitate interactions between tourists and whale sharks.

The study was led by Dr Lauren Meyer of Flinders University, Australia, co-authored by an international team, including Dr Alison Kock, Cape Research Centre, SANParks.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14724049.2021.1931253