Tourism and coastal fisheries interaction: impacts and mechanism on social-ecological coastal ecosystems

Abstract

Tourism and coastal fisheries play key roles supporting livelihoods and shaping local development in coastal areas. Balancing social-economic benefits with ecological sustainability remains a significant challenge. Overexploitation of marine resources is one of the main drivers of biodiversity loss in marine ecosystems, and tourism has been proposed as a sustainable alternative to fisheries by supporting conservation goals while maintaining local livelihoods. Yet the direct influence of tourism on fishing pressure remains unclear, as most studies are highly context-specific, and provide limited generalizable insights. We conducted a scoping review of 317 articles to characterize the interaction between tourism and fisheries. Then, we selected a subset of 124 articles to explore the impacts and mechanisms underlying tourism–fisheries interactions. Research in the topic has increased over time, with most articles concentrated in ecology then fisheries and ocean journals. Most articles address both social and ecological dimensions. Only a small subset of studies explicitly evaluate the effects of tourism on fishing pressure. The effects of tourism on fishing depend on who participates in tourism, how livelihoods are reconfigured, and whether governance aligns tourism with fisheries management. Tourism could increase fishing pressure when driven by external and unconscious actors, leading to unsustainable demand for seafood and high-value species. Conversely, tourism could reduce fishing pressure when tourism engages with sustainable demand, or when fishers shift partially or entirely to tourism, decreasing time allocated to fishing or through the establishment of conservation areas. Sustainable marine coastal ecosystems require actively linking tourism development to fishing across governance and livelihood context.

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