Dolphin-watching tourism and indo-Pacific humpback dolphins (Sousa chinensis) in Sanniang Bay, China: impacts and solutions

Cetacean-watching tourism has become an economically important recreation industry, but can compromise cetacean viability and hence tourism sustainability. While current management tactics pay much attention on industrialized cetacean-watching tourisms, impacts of tours operated by motorized boats in inshore waters are seldom discussed. This study investigated the spatial and temporal activities of dolphin-watching tours in Sanniang Bay, China, where tours specifically focus on Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins ( Sousa chinensis ). The primary boat-dolphin interaction directly overlaps with a core habitat of humpback dolphins. Average tour duration was shorter than 40 min and approximately one third of time was spent on following dolphins. Monthly tour activities were extremely high in February, early May, August, and October that corresponded to Chinese national festivals. An eastward shift of primary interaction site during high-tour-activity months implies a long-term tour impacts on habitat use of humpback dolphins in northern Beibu Gulf. We urge a collaboration and coordination between boat captains, tour managers, maritime administrative, academic teams, and NGOs to systematically collect tour statistics in Sanniang Bay, including daily tour and visitor numbers, encounter duration and locations, and unsustainable maritime activities. As eco-tourisms targeting humpback dolphins and other coastal cetaceans adopting small motorized boats are rapidly growing in southeastern Asia, management guidelines involving codes of conduct, allowable daily trips, and sustainable tourism tactics are urgently needed before the tourism becomes industrialized and economically oriented. Variables and statistics presented in this study can provide a baseline proxy to help design management guidelines to minimize unsustainable impacts on the target animals.