Blue Horizons: Integrating Marine Ecotourism, Cruise Branding, and Ocean Conservation in the Wake of David Attenborough's Ocean

This article interrogates the evolving interplay between marine ecotourism, cruise industry transformation, and global ocean conservation, contextualised within the environmental, political, and symbolic weight of Sir David Attenborough's 2025 documentary Ocean. In a time of escalating ecological crisis, marked by acidifying oceans, biodiversity collapse, and extractive economic logics, this paper explores whether tourism, historically complicit in marine degradation, can become a force for ecological regeneration and ethical economic development. Grounded in interdisciplinary research, empirical case studies, and cultural critique, the article positions marine ecotourism as a vector of both economic innovation and environmental stewardship. It further considers how the cruise sector, often emblematic of mass-tourism excess, might be restructured through sustainability-driven branding, policy alignment, and operational reform to contribute meaningfully to the blue economy. Drawing on conservation biology, tourism theory, branding strategy, and environmental ethics, this work calls for a fundamental reimagination of how human mobility, ocean governance, and narrative framing intersect in the Anthropocene.