stewardship of important habitats and wildlife on the coast. CARE was developed with a Coastal Incentive Grant from the Georgia Depart - ment of Natural Resources Coastal Resources Division and is led by Marine Educator and Volunteer Coordinator Katie Higgins. What impact are these programs making? The three programs reflect local needs and are helping to strengthen the working relationships among tourism-related organizations so that they will be better able to respond to pressing coastal environ - ment issues together. The evaluation results from our 2019 Coastal Geor - gia Tourism conference were validat - ing. Feedback was overwhelmingly positive about the need for such a meeting: 80% of participants said the meeting should be an annual event. We have held it twice since
Georgia’s 100-mile coastline attracts 30 million visitors every year from across the state and around the world. They are drawn by the biological diversity of the area—which includes 370,000 acres of salt marshes, 14 barrier islands, and upland wetland and freshwater systems such as the iconic Okefenokee Swamp—as well as the coastal region’s long history and rich culture. Coastal Crowd
Savannah
Georgia Sea Grant financial assistance program that supports Georgia seafood and communities that depend on these resources (adapted from Maine Sea Grant program)
$90,000 awarded to date
$10,000 & $15,000 grants
Barrier Islands
Atlantic Ocean
Okefenokee Swamp
Eligible Applicants Any business or non-profit connected to Georgia seafood or tourism industry or the heritage of fishing and aquaculture communities
food pitch competition, and the Coastal Awareness and Responsible Ecotourism (CARE) program. Georgia Coastal Tourism Conference provides opportunities for networking and information sharing among organizations that manage tour - ism in popular destinations such as Savannah and the Golden Isles (Saint Simons, Jekyll, Sea Island, and Brunswick). We held the first confer - ence in 2019. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 conference was a series of online facilitated discussions, abut we were able to hold an in-per - son conference again in fall of 2022. We heard from locally owned businesses, agencies, and or - ganizations that they needed more opportunities to connect and collect best practices beyond what exists for the larger communities and destina - tions. We all knew that there were lots of wonder - ful tourism-related activities happening along the coast, but the left hand doesn’t always know what the right hand is doing.
Q & A Bryan Fluech Public Service Assistant & Associate Director Marine Extension and Georgia Sea Grant University of Georgia fluech@uga.edu
the tools to implement best practices for wa - ter-based tourism. We believe that engaging ecotourism companies through a certification course will build support for the conservation and
then, attracting more than 100 attendees. The information discussed and shared about cultur - al tourism at the 2020 Coastal Georgia Tourism
Describe Marine Extension’s key tourism programs and why they were created. While there is a lot of interest in seeing tourism expand in coastal Georgia—particularly in its more rural communities—there is also concern that too much growth could jeopardize Georgia’s unique coastal environments and culture. This was why we created such initiatives as the Georgia Coastal Tourism Conference, the “What’s the Hook?” sea -
t Funds raised from Georgia Sea Grant’s “Oyster Roast for a Reason” event support aquaculture research and training opportu- nities, environmental education efforts, and internships for college students.
In 2021, we launched CARE— a certification program that provides ecotour companies with
40 The NET Effect | Extension Foundation/NTAE
Extension Foundation/NTAE | The NET Effect 41
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