• Identified aqua based recreational tourist activities in Southern coastal area related to their locations.(nearly 35 tourism activities)
• Dividing these activities in to 5 categories using following characters which prepared using reliable secondary data from research articles, websites, magazines; Sri Lanka Tourist Development Authority (SLTDA) data, Department of Wild Life Conservation data, Sri Lanka Navy data and Sri Lanka Coast Guard data.
• Further, questionnaire survey was carried out targeting the tourists and other stakeholders in the Southern Coastal Area of the country to gather the primary data
• After analyzed the responses of questionnaire data and collected secondary data Aqua based recreational tourism activities were categorized while ensuring the 80% relevance about the activity to each category.

• Water Sports - The sports that take place on or under the water that provide entertainment rather than its exploration value of nature.
• Traditional activities - Water tourism Activities that have ornamental and long-standing traditional value, style or custom and also an event that has been inherited from the past group or society and is now commercialized, change or developed with the time.
• Nature tourism - Where the natural environment and animals in the coastal environment are the background for the performances of various activities, and activities where the evidences are insufficient to say that it was inherited by community or group.
• Under water activities - Competitive sport under water using one or combination of the following techniques such as breath hold, snorkeling, scuba use of equipment and has exploratory knowledge.
• Beach tourism - Tourism related activities that is done along the coast of an ocean, sea, lake or river for recreational or leisure. Beach tourism activities are the socioecological activities on the coastal area, which is developed and managed for primary purpose of attracting tourists in Sun, Sea, Coast, sand activities and relaxation.

There were 13 Potential of impacts for aqua based recreational tourism activities

• Wildlife disturbance
• Ocean noise
• Ship strike
• Trampling
• Over harvesting
• Marine pests
• Anchor damage
• Rubbish
• Wastewater/sewage
• Climate change
• Conflict between users
• Impacts on near shore environment
• Impacts on remote environment

With use of color code, the impact towards the ecosystem was indicated for each of water tourism activity.

• No impact – White
• Less impact – Green
• Medium impact – Yellow
• High impact – Red

Finally, calculate overall impact and got the sum of impact relevant to each tourism activity.

If overall impact,

• within 1-7 - Green color (Low disturbance to Ecosystem),
• within 8-14 - Yellow color (considerable disturbance)
• above 15 - Red color (High impact)