Manta Ray Watching Sites Ranked by Tour Operators with Tourist and Vessel Counts

A dataset listing the most visited manta ray watching dive and snorkel sites as ranked by tour operators. It includes mean numbers of tourists, tourist vessels, and manta rays observed per trip, categorized by the northeast or southwest monsoon seasons. The dataset was authored by Hannah M. Moloney and last updated on 2026-06-01.

Use Cases

• Ranking popular ecotourism sites based on operator-provided rankings.
• Analyzing tourist pressure on marine sites based on mean tourist and vessel counts.
• Studying seasonal manta ray abundance patterns based on monsoon season categorization.
• Correlating human activity with wildlife sightings based on per-trip observation data.

Strengths

• Mean values are provided with standard error (± SE) for key metrics.
• Data is categorized by active monsoon season (NE or SW), providing a temporal structure.
• The dataset is openly licensed under CC-BY-4.0.

Limitations

• The dataset is very small at 9.5 KB, indicating limited scope.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

figshare

Collection Method

Likely compiled from surveys or reports of tour operators.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-01 17:40:32; freshness should be verified.