Samenvatting

For multiple reasons, such as changing ocean temperatures, overfishing and unsustainable tourism coral reefs are declining worldwide. A negative feedback loop is created by the loss of three-dimensional structures that the coral reefs create. These three-dimensional structures provide shelters for grazing fish species such as; parrotfish (Scaridae), surgeon fish (Acanthuridae) and many more. The decrease in those structures cause these fish to disappear and causes algae to grow more freely and overgrow the corals. Which in turn causes loss of more three-dimensional structures. An option to battle this loss of three-dimensional structure is the use of artificial reefs. These reefs provide new structures for the fish species. Declining coral reefs not only cause ecological problems but also many local communities lose revenue with this decline. Artificial reefs placed by AROSSTA around St. Eustatius are being used to compare different reef types (Reef Balls, Layered Cakes and Pile of Rocks) on their ecological effects and possible benefits for local reefs. However, no research has been done to identify what kinds of reefs are most preferable for the dive community on St. Eustatius. To find the answer, 107 divers were interviewed and asked to rank the following eight reef attributes; ‘Fish Diversity’; ‘Fish abundance’; ‘Coral diversity’; ‘Coral abundance’; ‘Benthic Diversity’; ‘Benthic abundance’; ‘Natural look’ and ‘Complex look’. Those attributes were then measured on the three different artificial reef types that are deployed by AROSSTA using standardized survey methods. The different reef types were then compared using a Multi-Criteria Analysis (MCA) with the diver preferences as the weight for the attributes. Even though the Layered Cake did not score highest on the most preferable attribute. it came out as the best option for dive tourism. This due the fact that the Layered Cakes scored overall highest on the different reef attributes. Since there is no standardized method to assign weights to the criteria, there is some room for discussion about how the weights relate to one another.