KEY POINTS:
There has been a 10-fold increase in the number of people whale and dolphin watching in the Pacific region, not including New Zealand or Australia, in the past decade.
A review of whale watching in the Pacific released yesterday showed a mammoth surge of visitors to the region who went whale or dolphin watching.
In 2005, tourists - mostly international - made more than 110,700 visits to watch whales compared with 10,300 in 1998.
The review, by the International Fund for Animal Welfare, said the Pacific was home to a high diversity of cetaceans (whales and dolphins) and contained critical breeding, calving and feeding grounds and migratory pathways for many species.
Historically, the region was a focus for whaling from the late 1700s and many species were hunted to the brink of extinction and recognised as still threatened today.
Whale and dolphin watching tourism had developed over the past 10 to 15 years and was now a fast growing tourist attraction and an increasingly important element of the region's economy.
The industry was estimated to be worth US$21 million ($26.7 million) annually, up from US$1.2 million in 1998, in both direct and indirect tourist expenditure, including other activities tourists took part in while in a country whale watching.
The amount spent by tourists directly on whale and dolphin tours had increased from US$500,000 to more than US$7.5 million from 1998 to 2005.
The average ticket price was US$76.
The review said most Pacific Island countries and territories had a strong basis for cetacean conservation and many had declared their exclusive economic zones as whale sanctuaries.
Such conservation measures provided a sound basis for tourism development, having led to increasing numbers of visitors coming to watch the creatures and spending significant tourist dollars to do so.
The growth rate each year since 1998 was estimated at 45 per cent, compared with 25 per cent in Australia and 11 per cent in New Zealand.
It also outstripped the region's average inbound tourism growth of 7.3 per cent.
Dolphin watching in Guam dominated growth, with 84,000 watchers in 2005 compared with 4000 in 1998, and had the fastest growth rates, with French Polynesia.
For Tonga, which had a well established whale watching tourism industry, the numbers of watchers grew from 2334 to 9000 in the same period.
A more recent convert to whale watching, the Cook Islands, had grown its tourism in that area to 3715 whale watchers.
New whale watching countries include Papua New Guinea, Samoa and the Solomon Islands.
The review said the strong growth trends were likely to continue and the industry would expand as more countries with minimal or no involvement came on board.
Of the 22 Pacific countries studied in the review, nine had whale and dolphin operations in 1998 compared with 14 in 2005.
The review said the expansion in whale watching tourism could be helped if regional tourism markets were developed and knowledge about the occurrence of cetacean species in the region was improved.
Constraints to developing whale and dolphin watching included their population sizes and tourist accessibility including reliability and affordability.
