The price of wildlife tourism in Sri Lanka 🇱🇰

I wasn’t sure what kind of blog I wanted to write until this morning. I knew I didn’t want it to be a story of our trip, as that easy to tell in photos. I’ve always loved journalism and I want to reach deeper into the culture and issues that arise as we travel around. Our trip this morning helped my first post become clear so here it is…

Disclaimer: To be able to write this post on my blog, I am well aware that I have entered into the tourist activities that I am about to discuss the pros and cons of. We always try to use sustainable and reputable companies when booking wildlife tours and do mountains of research to ensure this. The companies we have used have all been fantastic and would highly recommended them all for reasons including; organisation, respect for the animals and price. I have shared their information at the end of the blog and I am not in any way paid to do this. All of this subject matter is all open for discussion and I’d love to hear your views and experiences too.

It’s 6am. The sun is rising, the water is calm and beach is peaceful. It feels like paradise. We’re first on the beach, except for the guys working at Blue Water Sports. There is excitement in the air laced with anticipation.

We board the boat and somehow end up at the back, despite being first on the beach but with two 7-year-olds in tow, sometimes it’s not always a speedy process of collecting crocs and discarded jumpers!

Our guide starts the engine and we head out to sea, joined by one other boat from the same company. We head in different directions, a promising start to a quiet trip. Our guide cut the engine after about 10 minutes and we floated around in an area on the look out for whales and dolphins but to no avail. We headed further out, where it became clear that there was about 50 boats all in the same area.

I spotted dolphins and pointed them out to the group, my voice drowned out by the rush of motor boats all headed in the same direction; some driving straight across the path the dolphins were swimming…our concern for the animals welfare starts to grow. There is a feeling of unease amongst the 6 adults on the boat (the other 4, we don’t actually know.) Our guide recognises this and is also discussing it with other drivers he is friends with, both gesticulating about how much it annoys them.

This crazy speeding towards pods of dolphins continues, as if there might only be one sighting of them in the day and here lies the problem…

The tour companies guarantee that tourists will see dolphins and not whales as they are more elusive; some even offer a money back guarantee if you don’t see them, meaning they are all out at sea with one aim, to get sightings of dolphins for their punters.

We continued in this uncomfortable spiral for 30 minutes, our guide, and some others, continuing to be respectful of the dolphins, others behaving like cowboys.

Eventually, the boats all started to drift apart and viewed different pods of dolphins but even then, some less careful tour guides continued to speed across the sea at every opportunity.

We got to see some dolphins, which was amazing because they are beautiful creatures but it felt tainted by the amount of boats and carelessness of some. I also got to breathe in the fumes of the engine for 2 hours, but it’s nothing compared to the amount of it being plundered into the ocean every morning around the dolphins.

What you see on Instagram…

…vs the reality

We’ve been here two weeks now and have also embarked on a turtle snorkelling trip in Mirissa and safari in Udewalwe National Park.

Each of these trips stirred similar feelings of whether this kind of tourism is a good thing or do we need to look at helping these countries limit the amount of people allowed to each place, each day.

The National Parks charge high prices to enter, but when met with cheap costs to the consumer from the tour company, it is still affordable to most travellers. Equally, the turtles just happen to be around this area of the sea so how would it be managed and regulated, without becoming an official Marine National Park?

On the safari, we were met with, essentially, traffic jams around animals as every tour guide bid to give the best experience, promising the sighting of elephants and suggesting the chance of seeing a leopard in their natural habitat. Tourists were leaning out of the jeeps to touch the animals, despite being given instructions not too. One of my 7 – year-olds was very upset by this, having sat and read the rules on the way in. The animals were crowded and one of them quite scared by the amount of jeeps, eventually retreating into the bush to escape.

**A lone elephant we saw and there was only a few jeeps keeping a good distance.**

**After the traffic jam had passed and there was just 3 of the jeeps. The elephant on the right actually came back out after being scared away by the huge amount before.**

The turtle experience offered similar crowding of animals and bringing food to entice them in. A full refund guaranteed if we didn’t see any turtles and for a group of 10, that is a substantial amount of money for a Sri Lankan business to make in a morning. We arrived early so it was just our group to start with and we were able to give the animals space to swim around us freely. Within 1/2 hour though, more and more people started to arrive. As we swam away to observe some of the other coral and fish, a group of 6 people in life jackets and clinging onto a rubber buoy arrived. None of them in masks and all flailing their legs around under the water, no idea what was beneath them. We had made sure to talk to our girls about wearing a life jacket and flippers to make it easier and keeping their face in the water to protect the underwater world.

I have no problem with any of these trips running and people making a living from them, I for one, am buying into them but we do try to make sure we are respectful, quiet, and speak to our guide if we are not happy.

Unfortunately, while people can make a living from these types of trips, they will continue but at what cost to the wildlife and local environment?

Laurie Bevan-Jackson

Reality of Adventure