So, are we saying that those who utilize the resource the most will have to pay the most?
Is $40.00 too much to ask to access the area for a year? Isn't this really a minor expense? Many of us pay more than this for a night on the town.
I don't agree that divers utilize the resource the most. Or if so it's barely more than the cruisers. Without hard data it's a theoretical argument at best, but just for fun let's refer to these 2016 tourism statistics for reference.
In 2016 136,000 total tourists visited Bonaire by air. 10% of those were daytrippers from Aruba and Curacao etc. Of the remaining 122,000 overnight visitors, 39% of them stayed between 4 and 9 nights, with the vast majority (15%) staying 7 nights. So for the sake of simple math let's say that 7 nights is typical, which I don't think is a stretch of the truth after looking at the Pareto chart. So that's about 47,500 tourists. Again being generous, let's assume 80% of them are scuba-divers requiring the $25 tag and that all of them are diving every day. (The other 20% being non-diving kiteboarders, windsurfers, beachcombers, elderly, other non-diving tourists, and part or full time island residents.)
So now we're at roughly 38,000 divers visiting Bonaire annually for an average of 7 days. We also need to factor that almost all divers dive one less day than their total trip duration, so 7-night divers typically dive for 6 days, which is in line with most dive and car rental packages offered.
A $25 dollar tag divided by 6 days is $4.17/day.
38,000 divers x 6 days = 228,000 diver-days at $4.17 per diver-day.
According to this report by the same organization, Bonaire received 230,000 cruise passengers in 2015, 216,000 cruise passengers in 2016, and a whopping 407,000 cruise passengers in 2017. I have no idea how many engaged in scuba diving or other watersports, but I do know that NONE of them paid marine park fees to offset the impact of their visit, or their ship's impact to the local marine environment.