ABSTRACT
Volunteering and dive tourism is a rapidly expanding sector of tourism globally and is actively promoted as part of volunteering and volunteer tourism policy by the UK government and other Western governments (Rochester et al, 2009). Dive tourism is rapidly growing in Malaysia. Malaysia regularly welcomes conventional leisure-based dive tourists to its world-class dive sites as well as those volunteering for scientific monitoring purposes, engaging in such activities as the Reef Check programme, as it has world-class diving locations. However, few disabled divers appear to participate in diving in Malaysia and, specifically, do not seem to be participating in volunteering and dive tourism. Consequently, this chapter discusses this based on findings from a series of in-depth semi-structured interviews. These semi-structured interviews were conducted online with internationally based disabled divers and also with dive instructors working in Malaysia. In addition, face-to-face interviews were also carried out in Malaysia. The interviews explored the issues of the wider context of disabled dive tourism together with the capacity of the dive industry in Malaysia to cater for disabled divers. Finally, the lack of participation of disabled divers in coastal and marinebased volunteering in dive tourism in Malaysia was examined.
