Tourism, Environmental Education, and Aquarium Trade

Coral reefs are places of remarkable scenic beauty, with colorful biodiversity and associated with clear and warm waters. Visiting a reef system usually carries a sense of adventure and emotion for people. As such, it also combines this excitement with much-needed environmental education actions. This chapter connects three human activities in reef areas on the Brazilian tropical coast: tourism, environmental education, and aquarium trade. These are sources of employment, with foreign direct investment and gross domestic product. The economy of coastal states depends on these revenues, which are linked to recreational activities and the quality of the beaches. However, poorly planned tourism causes severe damage to these delicate reef environments, so educational activities must be designed to contribute to the conservation and preservation of the environment. After all, nobody wants to visit a degraded setting. Some possible solutions include defining good indicators to monitor the capacity to support tourism and incentives for ecotourism, including environmental education practices and sustainable fishkeeping. With these approaches, visitors will have the opportunity to learn about different aspects of aquatic ecosystems and their species, to draw analogies between artificial and natural environments, and to raise awareness of the importance of balance for the survival of living beings.