161 Tourism in Marine Environments, Vol. 8, No. 3, pp. 161–171 1544-273X/12 $60.00 + .00 Printed in the USA. All rights reserved. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3727/154427312X13491835451539 Copyright © 2012 Cognizant Comm. Corp. E-ISSN 2169-0197 www.cognizantcommunication.com REVIEW RECENT ADVANCES IN WHALE-WATCHING RESEARCH: 2010–2011 CAROL SCARPACI* AND E. C. M. PARSONS†‡ *School of Engineering and Science (Applied Ecology), Victoria University, Victoria, Australia †Department of Environmental Science and Policy, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA ‡University Marine Biological Station Millport (University of London), Isle of Cumbrae, Glasgow, UK Whale-watching research encompasses a wide variety of disciplines and fields of study, including monitoring the biological impacts of whale-watching activities on cetaceans and assessments of the effectiveness of whale-watching management and regulations, to the sociological and economic aspects of whale watching on communities hosting such activities. This article is the latest in a series of annual digests, which describes the variety and findings of whale-watching studies published in the year since June 2010. Key words: Whale watching; Code-of-conduct; Regulations; Management; Whale watchers; Protected areas Address correspondence to E. C. M. Parsons, Department of Environmental Science and Policy, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030-4444, USA. E-mail: ecm-parsons@earthlink.net Introduction Recognizing the difficulties of keeping up to date on the wealth of research on whale-watching activities, in particular the impacts of these activi- ties on cetaceans, a paper summarizing the breadth and variety of whale-watching research, published during the previous year, was presented to the International Whaling Commission (IWC) Scien- tific Committee’s Whalewatching Subcommittee (Parsons, Classen, & Bauer, 2004) during the 56th Annual Meeting of the IWC. As this was deemed to be a useful digest of recently published articles, and as such assisted the work of the Subcommittee, similar digests in following years were requested (see Parsons, Lewandowski & Lück, 2006; Parsons, Lück, & Lewandowski, 2006; Parsons & Scarpaci, 2010; Scarpaci, Parsons, & Lück, 2008, 2009; Scarpaci, Lück, & Parsons, 2009). This is the seventh in this series of review articles, detailing a summary of whale- watching research published over the past year (June 2010–May 2011), since the 62nd Annual Meeting of the IWC.