The Mentawai parliament has passed new legislation that regulates tourism with two key objectives:

1. To protect coral reefs from indiscriminate anchoring near surf breaks. Each time a surf charter boat anchors at a break, the anchor and chain destroy between 10 and 20 m2 of live coral Some boats move several times a day and with about 25 boats working at any time, that could mean between 250 and 500m2 of coral reef lost every day of the season. Multiply that by 200 days and we are talking about up to 100,000m2 (10 Ha) of reef being trashed every year. Many times the same part of the reef is being dragged and crushed every day making recovery impossible and causing substantial loss of habitat and opening up the reef to virus and algae attack as the damaged area decomposes and dies. You could liken this to an ulcer that wont heal and the long term impact on Mentawai's amazing reefs is hard to imagine. Marine Management Areas are being established around the more sensitive reefs and moorings will be installed.

2. To raise tax revenues for infrastructure. Since Autonomy, Regencies like the Mentawais have been under pressure to stand on their own feet and raise taxes and tariffs so that funding from Jakarta can be phased out. This year is crunch time. Last year the five licensed Marine Tourism Operators in Mentawai raised over Rp600 million and an additional Rp250 million is still due from boats for 2007. This exceeds the total tax revenues (PAD) for Komodo National Park in Flores and the dragons have been well know for 50 years. All boats working in Mentawai must now be licensed under one of the 5 Marine Tour companies approved by the Mentawai Government. See http://www.mmta-mentawai.org