Off-season dive boom strains Costa Mar's reef quotas

Puerto Azul's dive shops are running at eighty-five percent capacity through July, a figure that would normally appear only in December and January. The shift has caught the Costa Mar Reef Monitoring Network and the marine cooperatives off guard, with several operators requesting emergency quota adjustments from the Marine Ministry to accommodate the surge without compromising reef integrity.

The unexpected arrivals follow a soft spring season that left many lodges concerned about summer revenue. Instead, word-of-mouth promotion and social media have drawn visitors during months when the region traditionally saw half-occupancy and lower prices. Cooperative captains report that divers are arriving in clusters, sometimes overwhelming the staggered-entry schedules designed to limit daily reef contact.

The Marine Ministry has scheduled an emergency consultation with the Costa Mar Reef Monitoring Network and the dive cooperatives for late July. At stake is whether the region can sustain higher visitor volumes without degrading the coral ecosystems that underpin both the tourism economy and the region's long-term marine health.