ABSTRACT
In southeast Asia 80 per cent of the coral reefs, being complex mosaics of marine plants and animals, are ecologically degraded due to practices such as coral mining, bomb-fishing, trap-fishing, and overfishing to name a few (Clifton, 2003, also see Green, et al., 2011; Caras and Pasternak, 2009; Elliott, et al., 2001). Because of these ecological threats, in 1996 the government of Indonesia designated Wakatobi as a Marine National Park and in 2002 as a Marine Protected Area (Caras and Pasternak, 2009). Since 2005 it has also been listed as a tentative World Heritage site. In turn this encouraged tourism, since World Heritage sites are more often visited by tourists than other destinations (Jimura, 2011; Buckley, 2004).
