Legal measures for controlling recreational scuba diving business in Thailand

Many dive sites in Thailand are always ranked as top dive sites of the world because of the beautiful and diversity of coral reef, fish and many more marine lives. In the last few years, the underwater world of Thailand can attract more than hundred thousand tourists each year to travel and discovery. Scuba diving industry can earn huge amount of income per year. While Thailand natural resource attracts many tourists, the tourists attract entrepreneurs. As a result, scuba diving business is growing up. However, growing of scuba diving business has caused many problems such as foreigners come to Thailand work illegally as an instructor or dive leader, diver’s death and injury from negligence operation and natural resources decadent from over capacity usage by scuba diving business. Generally, problems in scuba diving business are involved in public safety, human resources, and natural resources. One major reason is that Thailand is not well-experienced in this field of business; therefore, Thai laws and legal measures may not be efficient to organize and control the diving business. The Tourism Business and Guide Act B.E. 2551 does not support tourism business license registrations of every scuba diving business because a small and medium dive center that has no boat will take advantage of this gap of law to operate without license. Moreover, without governmental organizations having experts in scuba diving to control and inspect quality of scuba diving operators and professionals and to lay down recreational scuba diving standards or policies, low quality services have caused scuba diving accidents. In case of environmental protection, some dive areas outside national parks are not being legally protected on wildlife collection and feeding while scuba diving. There is also no limitation of diver in such areas that causes the over usage of marine resources. Besides, some diver-attractive animal are not under protection of any law even they are the highlight of scuba diving in Thailand. This thesis aims to focus on legal measures of the United States, Australia and the Philippines which are used to conduct recreational scuba diving business, protect public safety, and conserve natural resources in order to provide recommended ways that may be able to use to prevent problems from scuba diving business in Thailand.