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“Come and Dive” in Papua New Guinea: Surfing, Reefs, Paper Park MPAs and Marine Conservation Issues in PNG Beyond Sharks, Whales, Crocodiles, Seagrass and ‘Developing a Resource’

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Globalization and Papua New Guinea: Ancient Wilderness, Paradise, Introduced Terror and Hell

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Abstract

Coastal ecosystems worldwide are collapsing. In parallel, diving is a relatively recent but intrusive leisure activity of industrialization and its holiday society with a vast human footprint in the atmosphere, socially, on land and certainly under water. It was little pursued by humanity for millennia but never reached such an intensity and depths as found today, globally, e.g. as enabled by plastic and rubber gear, cumbustion engines, including sling shots made available to kids in supermarkets. The human pursuit of pristine wilderness—coral reefs and seagrass beds—remains ongoing, and Papua New Guinea (PNG) offers such waters and coasts. Here, the PNG diving, snorkeling and surfing situation gets put into a conceptual context of the modern ocean crisis, including ecotourism, neoliberalism, technical developments, charismatic megafauna, marine protected area (MPA) failures, sustainable development, climate change and sustainability governance.

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  1. -EWHALE Lab-, Department of Biology and Wildlife, Institute of Arctic Biology, University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF), Fairbanks, 99775, AK, USA

    Falk Huettmann

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Huettmann, F. (2023). “Come and Dive” in Papua New Guinea: Surfing, Reefs, Paper Park MPAs and Marine Conservation Issues in PNG Beyond Sharks, Whales, Crocodiles, Seagrass and ‘Developing a Resource’. In: Globalization and Papua New Guinea: Ancient Wilderness, Paradise, Introduced Terror and Hell. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20262-9_14

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