Cat Among the Penguins

2 responses to “Episode 4: Can wildlife tourism save ocean giants?”

1. 

   joewoodgate

   August 9, 2026 at 4:24 pm

   Another fascinating listen, thank you. It’s a relief to hear that responsible tourism can be genuinely beneficial in some circumstances. I foolishly mistimed my trip to Yucatan and failed to swim with whale sharks, but I’d love to one day, and it’s good to know I can probably do more good than harm by it.

   Still, this is a podcast about difficult, complex questions, so lets raise some. For tourism (any tourism, not just swimming with marine megafauna) there are two big issues: how to prevent harmful practices and what to do about overcrowding.

   Ensuring good behaviour is the easier problem and you already discussed how responsible operators can help form a self-policing community. Better regulations can also help, as can educating prospective tourists so that they choose reputable operators and pressure all operators to act responsibly. There are discussions to be had about what constitutes responsible behaviour and evidence is often hard to come by and open to debate but there is reason to be optimistic that these problems will become smaller over time, not larger.

   Sadly not true of the bigger issue of overcrowding. Jenny described swimming with whale sharks as something that everyone should try. Of course, it won’t appeal to everyone in the world but I can easily imagine that, say, a billion people might aspire to do swim with whale sharks, if their lives were safe, stable and affluent enough to permit it. It’s pretty clear, though, that would be a disaster for the sharks and their entire ecosystem.

   As humanitarians and non-hypocrites we must surely hope for the rest of the world to one day (soon) achieve the same standard of living as us, but we can’t possibly all pile in with the manta rays, so how do we either lower demand to a reasonable level or else decide on which lucky few get to do it and which have to give up on their dreams?

   This may be the biggest problem humanity has to confront in the coming years: the same dilemma applies not just to all types of tourism but to emissions, water consumption and every other use of scarce resources.

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   1. 

      jennyhickman

      August 11, 2026 at 3:31 pm

      Yes, really good points. And highly likely my excitement got the better of me as I reminisced about my experiences. I actually would be incredibly anti-“everyone-doing-this.”

      But the point about not everyone having access is an important one, and I imagine one we will talk about more around other topics. High cost ensures only privileged people can access it without providing any kind of assurance of good behaviour in the water (although it can mean much smaller and potentially well managed experiences), lower cost often results in far worse experiences for the animals with over crowding and a drive to get as many people in the water as possible.

      Although I can also imagine there are other ways to whittle this number down i.e. by banning social media sharing of the swim with experiences. I am not saying I am necessarily in favour of this as an approach, but it is likely that removing the promise of a glossy instagram post would dramatically decrease the numbers. Or perhaps by having official photographers of the experience, rather than everyone clamouring to attempt their own shark selfie. Perhaps there are other approaches that could be taken, but it is, as usual, a complex question with no easy answers!

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