Dive quotas strain as tourism rebounds unevenly across coast

The dive cooperatives of Costa Mar are reporting their busiest June in four years, with peak-season bookings up fourteen percent from the same month last year. Yet the recovery masks a deeper tension: while the coastal towns of Puerto Azul and Playa Blanca are turning away divers during high season, the quieter northern peninsula remains underbooked, and the cooperatives face mounting pressure to expand quotas beyond what reef monitors recommend.

The Costa Mar Reef Monitoring Network reported last week that nutrient runoff from June rains has stressed several breeding sites along the central shelf. The cooperative's own catch limits, already set conservatively, now conflict with the demand from tour operators who want to maximize summer revenue before the rainy season slows arrivals again.

Governor Solomon Adeyemi convened the Marine Ministry and cooperative leaders on Thursday to discuss whether federal tourism marketing dollars should be redirected toward off-season incentives—a move that would ease pressure on the reef during peak months but risk deepening the economic divide between the well-serviced coast and the interior towns.