Sanctuary Count – Toward Building a Visitor Use Monitoring Program in Marine Protected Areas

Summary National marine sanctuaries (NMS) are a network of underwater parks encompassing more than 629,000 square miles of marine and Great Lakes’ waters. Estimating the number of users and their activities within NMS poses unique challenges due to their porous borders. This case study will walk through past work, detail more recent work and provide an outline for how to move forward to build a visitor use monitoring program for national marine sanctuaries. Information © The Authors 2025