Towards culturally sustainable scuba diving tourism: an integration of Indigenous knowledge

ABSTRACT

Whilst there is an increasing literature about managing local Indigenous values in land-based settings for visitor experiences there is limited knowledge around how Indigenous values contribute to tourism development in marine environments. This paper explores how Indigenous knowledge and practices are integrated into scuba diving tourism development. In-depth face-to-face conversations with 49 Indigenous tourism stakeholders in Misool, Raja Ampat, Indonesia were conducted. Following narrative analysis, findings revealed five features of Misoolese knowledge and practices of the local communities: locating and attracting marine species, reading the signs of nature, respecting sacred sites, fish taboo, and marine sasi, a form of traditional marine resource management. The findings make a theoretical contribution as they explain how integrating Indigenous knowledge into successful tourism development can be achieved. It is argued that these Indigenous practices are instrumental for culturally sustainable tourism development in marine environments.

KEYWORDS:

• Indigenous knowledge
• scuba diving tourism
• marine ecotourism
• Misool
• Raja Ampat
• cultural sustainability

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Liveaboard is a boat where scuba divers can stay on board for one or more nights to allow time to travel to more distant dive sites.

2 Suku is a social entity that can be differentiated from other social entities based on the awareness of culturally different identities, especially the language.

3 Temporary cultivation by cutting and burning vegetation.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nurdina Prasetyo

Nurdina Prasetyo holds a PhD from the Department of Tourism, University of Otago, New Zealand. Prior to her PhD study, she worked for UNESCO Indonesia as Project Coordinator for Borobudur, where she gained experience living and working with the local community. Her current research interests include Indigenous knowledge and practices, marine ecotourism and scuba diving tourism. She has presented papers at international tourism conferences.

Sebastian Filep

Sebastian Filep is an Associate Professor at the School of Hotel and Tourism Management, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong. He specialises in tourist behaviour research and holds a Ph.D. from James Cook University. He has published internationally on topics related to well-being and sustainability. He has led multiple sustainable tourism research projects in the Asia-Pacific region. Dr Filep is on editorial boards of major tourism journals and is an active reviewer of journal articles in the field.

Anna Carr

Anna Carr is an Associate Professor at the Department of Tourism, University of Otago. She has editorial board appointments with Tourism in Marine Environments, Journal of Ecotourism, and the Journal of Heritage Tourism. Her research interests are focused on the environmental management of tourism and recreation in cultural landscape settings and indigenous tourism development.