This article forms part of a series of publications under MEDUSA project’s “Mediterranean sub-grant Adventure Tourism Competition” which aims at catalyzing the creation of new innovative adventure tourism products and experiences and upgrading existing products in our partner territories Jordan, Lebanon, Tunisia, Puglia (Italy) and Catalonia (Spain).

Enjoy reading and hope to welcome you soon at one of the wonderful places you will get to know here.

Eli Bonfill -oceanographer- and Aurora Requena -biologist-, are both science communicators and diving instructors. Their professional life has revolved around environmental education, associations and science. Eli has been passionate about the sea from an early age as she started snorkeling with her father since she was a little girl, and she discovered she wanted to be oceanographer at the age of 14 years after watching a 3D documentary about the ocean. Aurora discovered her love for the sea while snorkeling with her uncle in in Murcia’s beaches in Spain during the summers. Eli and Aurora met each other in 2010 while studying for a master’s degree in marine sciences and their friendship grew year in and year out.

1. What is “Plàncton, Divulgació i Serveis Marins” and when did it start?

We started working together as volunteers in the Catalan Association of Oceanographers and found ease in doing so, so the idea of creating a project together seemed like the right decision. One day we shared our ideas for the future and we discovered that we had the same goal: the preservation of the oceans. Thus, in 2012, we decided to create Plàncton, Divulgació i Serveis Marins, a marine consulting agency specialized in scientific outreach, educational services, and technical studies related to the sea. So Plàncton is not just an agency, but a dynamic life project founded on our concerns about the protection, conservation and management of sea and coastal environments.

We work anywhere in Catalonia, but our main focus is on the Tarragona coastline and more specifically the Terres de l’Ebre region. Our office is in l’Ametlla de Mar, a small fishing village with 20km of wonderful coastline. Home is where the heart is, and from our company’s headquarters, we aim to shed the light on the beauty and importance of every corner of this special yet relatively-unknown stretch of the Mediterranean coastline – encouraging everyone from school children and town mayors to tuna fish-farmers and tourists to find out more about marine ecosystems and how to protect them. This project also allowed us to establish our own diving centre, Plàncton Diving, where snorkeling and diving are the main activities to motivate people to learn more about the marine environment and increase its protection.              

2. What kind of product/s are you going to develop with the help of MEDUSA subgrant?

MEDUSA Subgrant will help us develop an idea we had 2 years ago, before the pandemic. We will create a new underwater experience for divers in one beach located in l’Ametlla de Mar village that we expect will be the first tourist product of this kind to be developed in Spain, and probably in the Mediterranean area. In addition, we want to create 3 versions of this experience in order to reach the maximum possible number of people: snorkeling, in a swimming pool or at the beach. The last two options would allow us to extend our tourist season, since the activity could be done even under unfavourable sea weather conditions.

3. Adventure tourism definition includes cultural immersion. Can you explain more the cultural / didactic aspect of the products?

The aim of the activity is sharing knowledge with participants about the marine environment and its fragility. We are currently in the Decade of the Oceans for Sustainable Development and we want to make the most of it through a dynamic experience like this, only in this case it would be done in the marine environment.

Our new activity will have an environmental outreach purpose, so while doing a nature-based tourism activity, they would learn about the sea, its fragility and the flora and fauna of the area of l’Ametlla de Mar and Mediterranean region. In this way, participants will enjoy sports activity while acquiring knowledge. Moreover, we could consider taking some further conservation actions, such as beach clean-ups.

4. What were the challenges that the sector / the agency now / before face?

Managing an enterprise in our country is not an easy task as we have a lot of barriers, so you have to be very creative and persistent to survive. The tourism industry, especially sea tourism, is limited by seasonality. We would like to offer our diving services the whole year, but it’s not been possible for different reasons: the sea conditions, weather conditions, and not enough customers from November to April. This creates a big problem in general that is the search for staff, especially in our case because we decided to bet on a scientific team as much as we can, so it’s not easy. However, in general, we feel lucky because we have the marine consultancy part of the company that allows us to work the whole year combining both areas.

Furthermore, as a result of climate change our oceans are full of natural impacts and our seas are changing. In addition to this, there are a lot of anthropogenic impacts and one of them is the touristic pressure especially in coastal areas. This can take us to a destruction of habitats and a reduction of marine biodiversity that we’ve been observing the last years.

5. How will your upcoming products address these challenges? What it is the positive impact expected?

One of our new product’s objectives is to reduce the seasonality, so maybe this will help us in this aspect. We will try to motivate tourists to come to the beach during the off season. Having the swimming pool and beach versions of the activity would allow us to perform it all year around and not be dependent on a particular sea weather condition.

Also, in the world of diving, people are looking for new places and new experiences all the time, so this activity can engage customers who are no longer motivated or bored of diving or snorkeling in our area. Also, we can encourage people to come to beach areas in low season motivated by the gamification part of the activity.

We want to outline that we want to perform this new activity outside sensitive spots to the impact of divers and eliminate pressure from areas most frequently visited due to their beauty. This can help preserve our coast and marine life.