Dive cooperatives wrestle with rising off-season demand

Captain Andrés Fuentes has been taking tourists to the reefs off Punta Negra for eighteen years, and he has watched the pattern shift. The high season—December through April—used to bring the crowds. Now, he says, the shoulder months and the early dry season are filling with arrivals. "People used to come for Christmas and Easter," Fuentes said one morning last week, checking his boat's diesel tanks at the Puerto Azul cooperative dock. "Now they come whenever they can get time off work, and they come from everywhere."

The Costa Mar Dive Cooperative Alliance, which manages reef-access quotas for the peninsula's six major dive zones, is facing a quiet crisis. Off-season demand has risen by 31 percent over the past two years, but the quotas—set by the Federal Fisheries Authority to protect coral and reef fish populations—have not changed. The Alliance's board is now in talks with the Regional Government about whether quotas can be increased without damaging the ecosystem.

The tension sits at the heart of Costa Mar's identity. The peninsula built its economy on the principle that conservation and tourism are not enemies but partners. A reef that is damaged cannot sustain tourism; a reef that is pristine sustains it indefinitely. But the pressure is mounting, and some operators are asking whether the quota system—designed for a different era of travel patterns—can survive the present.