[520 I love you, 523 I love turtles] Sea Turtle Film Festival, waiting for you to fly

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523 World Sea Turtle Day. Let's follow the wings of sea turtles. Travel.

Eco-tourism in Sipadan Island

Sipadan Island, a small island (less than 5 hectares) on the east coast of Sabah, Malaysia, was declared a bird reserve as early as 1933. Due to the large number of sea turtles in the area, the Sea Turtle Nature Reserve was established in 1964. However, even if it is set up as a protected area, due to lack of economic efficiency and weak law enforcement, before the development of eco-tourism, local residents made a living by fishing and picking up sea turtle eggs. After 1983, driven by the private sector, it gradually became a diving resort.

After becoming a diving resort, in order to protect the safety of tourists, naval police entered the area and put the original illegal fried fish and trawl fisheries under control. the number of fish and sea turtles in the surrounding area gradually recovered, but the influx of tourists and the corresponding resort waste water changed the surrounding marine water quality, and the visibility decreased from 60 meters to 20 meters. For the sake of sustainable marine resources, in January 2005, the Malaysian government strongly instructed all the resorts on the island to withdraw from Sipadan Island and restricted tourists from landing on the island (tourists must stay on neighboring islands and then take small boats to the local waters for diving activities). The daily number of divers is also limited to 120.

Under drastic control, the marine ecology has been maintained, but it is accompanied by the unemployment of local residents. On the one hand, the Malaysian government compensates the loss of life of local residents in the form of compensation, on the other hand, it sets up Sabah Ocean Park and advises residents to change jobs to become inspectors and diving ecological investigators. In order to internalize the external value of the environment into recognition of the environment, the Malaysian government has set up marine education groups and cleaning groups (kampung clean-ups) in local schools to encourage residents to participate in the planning of the Ocean Park and to consolidate local environmental awareness with the goal of applying for entry into the world.

In addition, in order to protect the breeding of sea turtles, Malaysia and the Philippine government have designated three small islands extending from the southern Philippines to the northeast of Sabah, namely, Selingan, Gulisan and Bakkungan Kecil, as Turtle Island traditional assets Reserve (Turtle Islands Heritage Protected Ared; TIHPA), to carry out conservation studies such as turtle egg incubation and marker tracking, and to patrol sea turtle spawning sites in cooperation with local organizations.

Because the environment is well maintained, there is still a steady stream of divers even if they have to go through three complicated and lengthy transportation processes such as airplanes, taxis and yachts to Sipadan. For the archipelago countries, the tourism industry is the main source of economy, and its benefits are even far greater than the economic benefits brought by fisheries. According to foreign experience, an average of one kilometer of coral reef can bring local tourism revenue of at least $1 million a year (Sabah families earn an average of $1300 a year). However, the key to the success of marine tourism lies in the maintenance of the marine environment.

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