When thinking about a place to vacation and enjoy with family and friends, the Crystal River, Florida, is one of the ideal places to visit. It is located in Central Florida, off its Gulf towards Mexico’s coasts. It is usually about an hour or two drive from north Tampa and offers many tourist attractions. Nevertheless, an ideal tourist like my Aunt Janise was one person who loved touring and enjoying natural environments. Therefore, I had the opportunity to visit Crystal River with her during my young years, and I realized how it was such a mouth-watering moment to enjoy the beautiful nature. Crystal River is an ideal tourist centre for tourists to enjoy the beautiful scenery and environment. The area is known to attract tourists even more than five times a year and hence is a clear indicator of how it has a lot of fun for various groups of people.
One of the fascinating adventures for tourists is swimming with manatees in the Crystal River Springs. No place allows tourists to freely interact and swim with manatees like the Crystal River Springs in a controlled and legal atmosphere like the Crystal River. Moreover, the area is full of ‘sea cows’, particularly during the colder seasons of Florida, since the water is usually about 72 degrees. Such a temperature occasionally draws a lot of manatees because they cannot survive under such harsh environmental conditions. It is also fundamental to note that recommended interaction between tourists and wildlife usually occurs in the colder periods, especially around mid-November up to March. Tourists are, therefore, encouraged to embrace ecotourism when they visit the site.
Ecotourism is a form of tourism that encourages responsible travelling and interaction between animals or plants and tourists so that they can conserve the environment while improving people’s well-being (Stronza et al. 19). The main idea behind ecotourism is to emphasize uniting communities and conservation and to foster sustainable development among people and communities. Ecotourism is one of the new concepts in tourism that encourages tourists to travel and move over places and tourist attraction sites while ensuring their conservation and protection. One of the fundamental guiding principles of ecotourism is, for example, the planting of trees in tourist sites. Ecotourism also prohibits building tourist hotels in tourist attraction areas but instead uses camps that use small spaces. Tourists are also not encouraged to drive off designated road paths (Baloch et al. 27). The aim is to ensure the vehicle tyres do not step on vegetation and grass, leading to their depletion.
Recent studies have shown that Crystal River has experienced a lot of environmental degradation and pollution due to the amount of solid waste disposed of in the area. Since the 1900s, there has been a decline in water quality, with research indicating a lot of nitrate concentration in the water. In the coastal water of Crystal River, the primary source of phosphorus and nitrogen is due to groundwater sources. The discharge from ground springs and excessive use of nitrogenous fertilizers flow into the coastal waters. Lyngbya, a type of cyanobacteria, has proved to be a significant problem to the local communities around Crystal River. The bacteria have caused a lot of detrimental effects on the manatees and have intoxicated the beautiful tourist attraction features (De Maria et al., 24). According to a recent study, more than 1000 tons of the harmful Lyngbya have been extracted from the coastal region by raking and mechanical harvesters. However, the removal of these bacteria has not proved to be helpful in fostering the regrowth of grasses. The manatees also destroy the native grass because they graze on the grass and prevent their regrowth.
As more and more regions located along the Crystal River continue to experience an influx of tourism due to beautiful coastal features and fascinating environments, it is also crucial to let the community understand the looming crisis that would arise due to continued pollution from industries and solid waste from households. Therefore, the public should be made aware of the detrimental impacts that the pollution will likely cause to the Crystal River environment. When they know the future of the tourist attraction site, the locals can put up necessary sustainable practices such as avoiding pollution and encouraging ecotourism.
Work Cited
Baloch, Qadar Bakhsh, et al. “Impact of tourism development upon environmental sustainability: A suggested framework for sustainable ecotourism.” Environmental Science and Pollution Research 30.3 (2023): 5917-5930.
De Maria, Maite, et al. “Chronic exposure to glyphosate in Florida manatee.” Environment International 152 (2021): 106493.
Stronza, Amanda L., Carter A. Hunt, and Lee A. Fitzgerald. “Ecotourism for conservation?.” Annual Review of Environment and Resources 44 (2019): 229-253.
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