I

am a diver who recently fell in love with Komodo National Park (KNP) while on a one-week trip in 2011. Since then I have returned to the park often, as it is in my humble opinion the most unique and diverse marine ecosystem that I have been privileged to visit.

Although I agree with fully preserving the park and making it a 100 percent no-take zone, I do believe that this is a delicate and complex issue requiring both short-term solutions and long-term management goals.

More emphasis needs to be put on the benefits of having the KNP as a marine reserve, such as an alternative and sustainable livelihood for locals, a healthy ecosystem badly needed to reverse negative trends in general ocean health, and less on the tourism dollars that it generates in revenues.

Although most will agree that tourism itself is a double-edged sword for ecosystems, in this case the benefits outweigh the pitfalls. Tourism changes the way locals earn money and encourages further education, but it also promotes unchecked development that negatively impacts the ecosystems, which people are coming to see in the first place.

However, compared to unregulated and destructive fishing, tourism is a much lesser evil. Take, for example, the dive company that I am loyal to in KNP, which employs 18 people, 16 of which are locals and have been trained in office management, boat crew and certified underwater guides.

These people all have families for whom they provide for and without these jobs would likely need to make a living off the land and sea as fishermen and farmers, putting further pressure on the marine ecosystems.

What we need is to hear more of these people’s voices about this issue. I think that their plight will carry much more weight than the voices of tourists complaining about their dive sites being ruined.

Putting aside the obvious bonus of a tourism economy, protecting the KNP as a marine sanctuary and reserve still makes sense. Healthy marine ecosystems are badly needed if we as a culture are going turn around trend of negative impacts that humans are having on our oceans (over-fishing, marine debris, coastal land reclamation, ocean acidification, etc).

We need healthy ecosystems to help us reseed our damaged ones, and we need as many as we can get. It is much easier to preserve what we have than to start from scratch.

We simply don’t have the thousands of years it took to build these vital ecosystems that support reefs. Besides stopping illegal and destructive fishing practices, these people need educating on the proper management of marine resources and they need things to be made easier for them to protect their resources.

Alice
Jakarta