Effect of Tourism Activities on Coral Communities at the Gulf of Suez, Red Sea

Although the rapidly expanding tourism industry is considered an extremely important economic activity, it caused increasing pressure on coral reefs of Egypt. Damage occurs from both direct and indirect impacts of tourism activities on coral communities. The Gulf of Suez has increasing of resorts from 8 at 2000 to 31 at 2014. This affected the coral communities along the area of study leads to a decrease in coral areas from 960 m2 at 2000 to 750 m2 at 2014, number of coral species from 21 species at 2000 to only 14 species at 2014, percentage cover of life coral from 46.4% at 2000 to 10.6% at 2014; on contrary, dead coral increased from 23.8% to 47.9% at the same period. This accompanied with an increase in the percentage of the algal cover from 8.6% at 2000 to 19.4% at 2014. The statistical analysis revealed a high correlation between the increased tourism activities and the coral status variables measured during the study. The data obtained showed high significant positive and negative correlation between the different variables that determined according to the effect of the different variables on each other and the relation between them. The simple linear regression statistical analyses showed a significant effect of tourism activities on the coral status, the analyses indicated that each increase in number of resorts by one resort leads to significant decrease in total coral area at the site by 0.9%, the analysis also showed that 80% of that decrease referred to the effect of tourism activities and 20% referred to other reasons. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) divided the recoded coral species into three categories, the first is soft corals which recorded significant increase in percentage cover from 2000 to 2014, the second is three species that recorded insignificant difference during the period of study, while the third category include most of the recorded species and they showed significant decrease in their percentage cover along time of study. The data obtained illustrated that all the investigated coral parameters are affected by the increasing tourism activities.


Introduction
Coral reefs are productive and diverse ecosystems characterized by a huge biodiversity and a high level of endemism as found at the Red Sea [1]. The high productivity of coral ecosystems are well known even they are surrounded by water poor in nutrients necessary for primary production [2]. As it is a very productive ecosystem, it provided food and subsequently shelter for a large number of individuals and species leading to a complex interaction inside the ecosystem [3], led to a sensitive ecosystem affected by any minor change which could cause a degradation of the overall ecosystem. The spectacular coral reef areas found in Egypt make it ideally for the fast-growing tourist market.
As coral reefs are main fishing grounds and attractors of large numbers of tourists, they generate important contributions to the national income of many countries. Coral reefs are important source of economy whether they are used directly or indirectly or even from non use value [4]. Despite this natural wealth and socio-economic advantages, many threats are posing stress on coral reefs.
Anthropogenic disturbances as tourism-related threats caused vast majority of long-term decreases in coral health and cover [5]. Human activities have destroyed the coral reef habitats and cause a reduction in coral cover by more than 50 per cent at most reefs [6]. If current degradation continues unabated, more than half of the world's coral reefs may be destroyed during the next 30 years [7].
The Egyptian coral reefs were at risk from human impacts; about 61% of the corals were greatly affected as was estimated by the World Resources Institute [8]. Along with the income generated by coral reef tourism to economy, it comes a series of destructive threats to the ecosystem. While the intact reefs are prime assets for Egyptian tourism, it is also the single cause of reef degradation. Egyptian Red Sea's live coral cover has been seriously declined over the last two decades [9]. The damage is caused by tourism use of reefs. In this respect, tourism is a double-edged sword as direct damage (trampling, breaking of corals by divers, etc.) and through tourism facilities (sewage; run-off, sedimentation, coastal alteration etc.). The damage caused by divers/snorkelers on corals reefs can take several forms, such as Kicking or brushing with the fins, use of hands, standing on corals, grabbing corals to pull themselves through the water, hitting coral with the SCUBA tank or other pieces of equipment, and also the creation of sediment clouds ([10] [11] [12]).
As a result of increasing the number of scuba divers, coral reefs related to tourism are expanding worldwide [13]. The destructive effect of mass tourism on corals was evident at four coral sites near Hurghada that showed a high physical damage in coral when exposed to mass tourism [14]. This damaged re-Journal of Water Resource and Protection flected by lower frequency of hard coral (especially Acropora), higher percentage of algae and higher percent of soft coral. Also the same authors reported that a control site away from tourism showed no damaged.
A study by Abou Zaid [15] showed that coral cover was decline when the number of divers exceeds the area's carrying capacity. He reported a gradual decline in coral cover over. He also concluded that as maximum as 10,000 dives per site seems to prevent serious degradation. Boat Anchoring and grounding is one of the serious damage correlated with tourism activities. In Sharm El Sheikh, the dive boats caused a high damage to the reef when increased from 26 at 1988 to 320 at 2000 [15].
Although tourism is an important source of fund in Egypt, it considers the greatest threat to corals reefs [9]. Because of these conflicting characteristics, coral areas must be managed in terms of tourism. In this respect, an ecological model has been used. The model consists of five important indicators that represent environmental characteristics of a coral reef. These indicators are coral cover, Live to dead coral ratio, coral biodiversity, non-living substrates and macro algae cover. The Threats to these indicators were incorporated by this model.
Also the resilience of and reproductive capability of the reef, were tested over a time period.
Although a lot of research has already been done on coral reefs and their degradation, there is still a critical need for detailed monitoring and assessment of reef habitats in order to better document where and how coral reefs are threatened and to understand what measures are needed to safeguard them.
This study aims to evaluate the different impact of tourism resorts at the Gulf of Suez on the coral reef areas over a 14 years period.

Site Description
The Gulf of Suez is a part from the Red Sea, the gulf has temperate characters since the extensive sandy bottom, and relatively shallow depths compared to the adjacent Red sea and Gulf of Aqaba. Gulf of Suez faces a lot of challenges since it is a dumped over and many pollutants as oil from oil refinery companies at its banks and oil fields inside the Gulf.
The gulf was formed within a relatively young but now inactive rift basin, dating back about 28 million years. It stretches some 300 km north by northwest,  The area of study is characterized by scattered coral patches and a heave tourism resorts.

Survey Coral Ecosystem
Data collected using Belt transect method ([16] [17]). In this method, a transect lines were employed to act as guides along which 1 m quadrate was placed every meter continuously, or at regular intervals (usually 2 m apart) depending on the transect length and the reef profile. Transects were located parallel to each other and to the Shoreline. The quadrate was made of aluminum pipe and divided into 100 squares with nylon line, and each square therefore represented 1% of the quadrate.
The following attributes were recorded' in each quadrate: total number of coral species; total number of colonies; abundance of each species; living coverage of each species (%); living coverage of hard corals, soft corals and microalgae (fleshy and turf algae); dead corals cover (%); Bare substratum (%). These attributes were again calculated at the level of each reef site.

Statistical Analysis
We used SPSS statistical program to carry out the statistical analysis for the obtained data [18]. Statistical analyses were used to examine relationships between the number of resorts and the total coral area, the life coral, dead coral, hard coral, soft corals and algae at the study site. We used simple linear regression to explore the relationships between the independent variable (Number of resorts) and the dependent variables. We also used Person's correlation coefficient to examine the degree of correlation between the different parameters investigated.
Finally we used Time Series Analyses to forecast the future situation at the area if the current conditions are ongoing.

Tourism Activities
Tourism in the Gulf of Suez, Egyptian Red Sea has been growing at an amazing rate over the last two decades ( Table 1)

Coral Status
The number of coral patches at the area gradually decreased from 32 patches at

Coral Diversity
A total of 21 coral species were recorded during the study period, 18

Simple Linear Regression
The simple linear regression analyses showed the relation between the number of tourism resorts at the Gulf of Suez as an independent variable and the coral status at the same area. The number of resorts increased during the period from 2000 to 2014, which affect the coral status ( Table 3).

Person's Correlation Coefficient
The data obtained showed high significant positive and negative correlation between the different variables that determined according to the effect of the different variables on each other and the relation between them. As shown in Table   4, there were a high significant positive correlation between the number of resorts and the percentage cover of dead corals and algae recorded +0.924** and +0.979** respectively. Contrary, there was a highly significant negative correla-

Time Series Analysis
The time series analysis was conducted during the current study to forecast the coral status and degradation if the current tourism activities continued at the same rate ( Table 5). The analysis forecast that if the tourism activities continued at the same rate, there will be a decline in coral areas from 750 m 2 recorded at 2014 to 530 m 2 at 2022, Also the percentage of life corals will decreased by 54.6% during these nine years, meaning that life coral will disappear long before year 2022.

Discussion
Egyptian coral reefs characterized by astonishing biodiversity and high endemism [1]. It is very hard to determine its intrinsic value. There are aspects of biodiversity that can be measured and monetized, and tourism is one of these aspects as it depends mainly on the status of coral reefs.
The coastal zones of Gulf of Suez are undoubtedly under heavy use and the pressure will not cease in the foreseeable future given the expansion of the tourism industry and other developments. The number of tourists visiting Gulf of Suez is on the increase. Economically, the coastal zone is by far the most valuable segment of the Egyptian territory.
Coastal and marine resources are of vital importance to Egyptian socio-economic development. These resources have suffered from the process of development and are at risk from internal and external threats including climate change, sea level rise and tourism activities [5]. Action to protect these resources is a priority for current and future plans. The implantation of a growing tourism compounds will only add further pressure to the coastal zones and have adverse impacts on the marine ecosystem.

M. H. Hasan Journal of Water Resource and Protection
There was no reef-related tourism in the Gulf of Suez till the end of the ninetieth, then the tourism activities begin to gradually increase, this accompanied with increasing adverse impact on the coral areas at the gulf, which directly affected by the tourism activities.
The state of the reef indicator grew by the time as a result of a complex relation between ecological and economic trends. Coral cover is the most valuable ecological reef indicator [19] that interacts with both the other ecological indicators and socio-economic variables. As found during the current study, there was a decrease in the life coral cover in the area accompanied with increase of dead coral cover and algal cover. This indicated that the coral areas is suffering from the tourism activities and the decline in all coral patches indicators were obvious. The decrease in coral diversity due to intensive tourism activities not only observed during the current study, but was also reported in many areas as in Hurghada, Red Sea [14]. The same situation was found in other areas in Egypt as in Sharm Elsheikh that showed a drop of coral cover from an average of 45% to around 12% [20]. This Loss of biodiversity has resulted in numerous impacts including economic, managerial, ecological, social, cultural and scientific consequences [21].
Eco-tourism related to coral reefs exploitation is expanding all over the world, this attributed to the increase number of SCUBA divers every year [13]. Divers can cause tissue abrasion, breakage, and mortality of corals [22]. In Considerable places of the world scuba diving is the main cause of coral reefs destructions ([11] [13] [23]). However, it was found that snorkeling was the worst tourism sea activity as found in Sembilan Islands, Malysia by AbdulRazek, et al. [6].
Tourism is the prime threat to Egyptian corals reefs. Egyptian Red Sea's live coral cover has been seriously declined over the last three decades, as a result of tourism use of coral reefs [24]. and about half of the world's reefs may be destroyed. The same conclusion for the effect of anthropogenic impacts on coral reefs was reached by AbdulRazak et al. [6]. The Egyptian coral reefs were at risk from human impacts; about 61% of the corals were greatly affected as was estimated by the World Resources Institute [8]. Also in their work on human impact on coral reefs Al-Zibdah, et al. [27] found correlation analyses indicated that species richness increased with increasing distance from the industrial jetty.
It was concluded by the current study that by far the tourism attraction is the prime importance use of coral reefs, although they have value for other activities.
Because the reefs are very important assets of eco-tourism, and because such tourism is a pivotal component of Egypt's strategy for tourism sustainability, it is indispensable that the reefs be protected from excessive use which could led to undermine a key asset for Egypt and its economy.
Unconstrained development along the Gulf of Suez will intensify tourism damage to coral areas. If the development continues at the current rates, economic benefits provided by coral reefs will be increased but only in the short-term.
If the impact of unmanaged tourism continued to increase (over-development and over-use), the value of the reef will decrease over time [20]. In contrary, if suitable management is adopted, the value of reefs in the short-term will be reduced, but the overall net value will be sustained at current levels and will even rise slightly over time [20].
The study provides decision-makers with a cogent information that supports the investment in protection the reef health and managing the natural resource M. H. Hasan Journal of Water Resource and Protection that supports tourism in the Gulf of Suez rather than the overexploitation of these resources.

Conclusion
The current study concluded that the tourism activities have a major effect on coral communities at the Gulf of Suez, Red sea. The destruction of corals continued during the period of study (14 years), and it is not stoppable as long as tourism activities continue to grow. In spite of the high revenue of tourism to the national income, it is only for the short term. If this tourism movement continued unmanaged, the income will greatly reduced and the loss of corals will be dramatic and unrestored. Action must be taken to manage the unleashed tourism activities in Egyptian Red Sea.