How to spot greenwashing in marine tourism

The short answer: look for things you can check. A named guide, a stated group size, a clear rule about distance to animals, and an independent standard are worth much more than the word “eco”. Wild animals cannot be scheduled, so anyone who promises them should make you pause.

I read a lot of listings. More people caring about their impact on the ocean is good news. But it also means these words get used loosely, and it gets harder to tell which listings describe real practice and which are just pleasant language.

What does greenwashing look like in marine tourism?

Greenwashing, in simple words, is when something is made to look more environmentally responsible than it is. Researchers who study it include vague claims, false claims, and a spotlight on one small green feature that hides a bigger harm. In marine tourism it usually shows up as a sustainability claim with nothing to check it against: no group size, no named guidelines, no local guides.

It is not only about tourism, and it is not only about bad people. A 2025 paper in Conservation Letters even used the word for some artificial reef projects, where funding was moving faster than the evidence. If you are curious how that works, read our article on whether artificial reefs work for conservation.

And what do travellers do with vague claims? The research is still thin. A survey of young adults in the UK and Australia found that people who saw more greenwashing in tourism adverts also felt more confused about eco-labels. That study relies on self-reported answers, so I take it as a hint, not a rule.

Certainty is a red flag, not a selling point

The first thing I watch is how an operator talks about the animals. Wild marine life cannot be scheduled. A listing that promises frequent, close or guaranteed encounters tells you something about its priorities: a business that promises that outcome is usually willing to push harder to deliver it. We have written about why wildlife encounters can never honestly be guaranteed, and I think it is the most useful thing to check before you book anything.

Pictures matter too. Close-up, crowded or hands-on photos show what a company wants you to expect, more than what a respectful encounter looks like. Honest marketing sometimes means a quieter, less dramatic picture.

What a real standard looks like

Independent standards are not perfect, but they give you something to verify. Two examples I could check are worth knowing.

Green Fins is an initiative started in 2004 under the United Nations Environment Programme and run with the UK charity Reef-World Foundation. Dive and snorkel operators commit to a 15-point code of conduct for their practice above and below the water, and trained assessors check them. Operators are ranked Bronze, Silver or Gold according to their performance. The programme says that more than 700 operators have joined as certified members since 2004. That number comes from the programme itself, not from an outside audit.

The Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC) organises its criteria around four pillars: sustainable management, socio-economic impacts, cultural impacts and environmental impacts. GSTC does not certify businesses itself. It accredits certification bodies, which then certify hotels, tour operators and destinations, and its criteria are meant to be adapted to the place and the activity. So when a company says “GSTC-recognised”, ask which certifier, and whether you can see the certificate.

Group size and the small print

Small groups can move quietly, wait longer and back off the moment an animal seems unsettled. That is much harder with a large group, or with several boats arriving at the same spot. It is a big part of why Ocean Calling keeps its hosted retreats to a maximum of six guests: a practical choice about what is possible in the water, not a marketing detail. I want to be clear that this is our experience, not a statistic I can cite from a study.

Operators who take this seriously will tell you plainly how close you can get, how long you can stay in, and when the encounter simply will not happen. Those limits can make an experience quieter or shorter than you imagined. That is often the point. If a company's guidelines never seem to get in the way of anything, notice that.

Good reviews do not prove good practice

This is the uncomfortable part. A 2015 study by Oxford University’s WildCRU, commissioned in part by World Animal Protection, looked at 24 types of wildlife attractions. It estimated that between 230,000 and 550,000 animals are held in attractions that harm their welfare, and found that tourists are usually unaware of the effects on the animals. Even for the attractions with the lowest welfare scores, around 80 per cent of tourist reviews were typically positive.

So a lovely rating tells you the guests were happy, not that the animals were. It is not a reason to distrust every review. It is a reason to read for details: group size, how the guides behaved, what happened when no animal appeared.

Questions to ask before you book

Here are the questions I would ask any operator, including us.

How many guests will share the water or the boat? Who are the local guides, and can I know their names? What is the rule for distance to animals, and who decided it? What happens if nothing appears? Is there an independent standard, such as Green Fins or a GSTC-recognised certificate, and can I check it myself?

A few small things help you stay honest at home too. A tropical travel kit with a refillable bottle and packing cubes keeps single-use plastic out of your bag, and your own low-volume mask and snorkel means fewer rental pieces moved around. These are small things, and I do not want to oversell them.

We do not get this perfect either

I do not think greenwashing is always deliberate. This industry is young, standards differ by region, and operators who really try are still working it out as they go, us included. We have changed how we run things before, because a local guide pointed something out or because something did not feel right in the water, and I expect that to keep happening.

What I would rather you look for, in us or anyone else, is not a perfect record. It is whether an operator talks openly about the limits of what they do: working with vetted local experts instead of claiming to know a place better than the people who live there, and treating “we did not see anything today” as normal, not something to explain away. And we have to be honest about travel itself: getting to the ocean burns fuel, and no label removes that.

If you would like to see how we try to apply this, you can look at our retreats, which are small, unhurried and flexible, and where guests may skip any activity. Our overview of ethical freediving retreats explains the thinking behind them.

Questions people ask

Wildlife encounters are never guaranteed and never forced. Ocean Calling works only with vetted, ethical local operators, and every animal is free to approach, or not, entirely on its own terms.