93 Can artificial reefs reduce impacts on historic shipwrecks? Perceptions and motivations held by wreck divers Joanne Edney* School of Environmental Sciences, Charles Sturt University, PO Box 789, ALBURY, NSW 2640, Australia Email: jedney@csu.edu.au Dirk HR Spennemann Institute for Land, Water and Society, Charles Sturt University, PO Box 789, ALBURY, NSW 2640, Australia Email: dspennemann@csu.edu.au *Corresponding author Introduction Recreational scuba diving began in the mid-1940s as safe and reliable equipment became commercially available, providing greater access to the marine environment (Dimmock 2009: 1–2; Dimmock & Cummins 2013: 16). During the 1980s and 1990s it was one of the world’s fastest growing recreational activities (Davis, Harriott, MacNamara, Roberts & Austin 1995: 30; Tabata 1992: 171–73) and today remains a popular and important global industry (Edney 2012: 7). As divers become more skilled and experienced, they seek new challenges, such as seeing unique wildlife, special sites, and wreck diving (Cater 2008: 55–9, 61; Tabata 1992: 178, 182). Wreck diving not only offers divers more challenging dive experiences, but shipwrecks also provide unique, diverse and intriguing diving experiences (Edney 2006: 205; Edney & Howard 2013: 52). As the dive community has increased in size and matured, there has been an increased interest in wreck diving and subsequent demand for wreck diving opportunities (Edney 2006: 206). This has seen more and more vessels sunk as artificial reefs—by governments and non-government organisations, particularly in Australia and North America, as their potential economic benefits are increasingly recognised by governments and communities (Dowling & Nichol 2001: 227–228; Morgan, Massey & Huth 2009: 44–6; Pendleton 2005a: 47–8, 51; Schaffer 2011: 3, 24–5, 27–8; Seaman & Jensen 2000: 11–12; Stolk, Markwell & Jenkins 2007: 331–32, 347). When divers visit historic shipwrecks they can have adverse impacts on the cultural heritage values of the sites, and the balance between maintaining these values whilst allowing divers access to these sites present a challenge to heritage managers (Edney 2006: 220; Scott-Ireton 2005: 111, 113; 2007: 19). This has become more topical as numbers of divers and the demand for wreck diving have increased. There are a range of regulatory and non-regulatory management strategies used to manage diver impacts, such as access restrictions, permit systems, zoning and various forms of education (Delgado 1988: 16–19; Edney 2006: 219–25; Edney & Howard 2013: 54–55; Scott-Ireton 2007: 26, 29–31; Viduka 2011: 14–16). With the growth in popularity of artificial reef wrecks, another strategy that warrants closer evaluation is the sinking of vessels as artificial reefs for recreational scuba diving to reduce diver pressure on shipwrecks with significant cultural heritage values. Literature review Wreck diving research While the literature contains a number of studies into the characteristics, motivations, preferences, satisfaction, attitudes and behaviour of recreational scuba divers generally (see for example, Anderson & Loomis 2011; Barker & Roberts 2004; Cater 2009; Fitzsimmons 2009; Harriott, Davis & Banks 1997; Medio, Ormond & Pearson 1997; Meisel & Cottrell 2004; Musa, 2002; Musa, Seng, Thirumoorthi & Abessi 2010; Musa, Sharifah & Lee 2006; Rouphael & Inglis 1995; Smith, Scarr & Scarpaci 2010; Thapa, Graefe & Meyer 2006; Todd, Graefe & Mann 2002; Zakai & Chadwick-Furman 2002), it is recognised that the dive community is diverse. Divers have differing levels of skills and experiences, as well as wide ranging interests. As such, it is expected that there will be differences in motivations, attitudes and preferences amongst the diving community (Dearden, Bennett & Rollins 2006: 353, 359), particularly with respect to divers with special interests such as wreck diving. However, little is known about this special interest group. Until recently there was only one example in the literature of a study specific to wreck divers—Holecek and Lothrop’s (1980a) examination of the demographics, behaviour and expenditure patterns of wreck divers from the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America (US). Recently there have been two other studies of wreck divers. One which examined the characteristics, motivations and attitudes of wreck divers visiting Chuuk Lagoon in the Federated States of Micronesia (Edney 2012), and a study of Australian wreck divers (Edney 2011a). These studies have shown that wreck divers are predominantly male, middle-aged, well educated, affluent, and experienced divers with high levels of diver certification. The most important motivations for wreck diving are to see marine life, historic shipwrecks and artefacts, to enjoy the peace and tranquillity of the underwater environment, and to penetrate wrecks. Most wreck divers accept the use of certain management controls to protect shipwrecks, including penalties, special certifications and the use of dive guides. Artificial reefs attract fish and divers The related literature contains numerous definitions of the term ‘artificial reef’; largely dependent on the purpose the reef was created for (Stolk et al. 2007: 333–35). For the purposes of this study, an artificial reef wreck is defined as a Bulletin of the Australasian Institute for Maritime Archaeology (2014), 38: 93–110