Interpretation has been used in many tourism sectors as a technique in achieving
building hannony between resources and human needs. The objectives of this study are to
identify the types of the interpretive methods used, and to evaluate their effectiveness, in
marine parks. This study reviews the design principles of an effective interpretation for
marine wildlife tourism, and adopts Drams' five design principles (1997) into a
conceptual framework. Enjoyment increase, knowledge gain, attitude and intention
change, and behaviour modification were used as key indicators in the assessment of the
interpretive effectiveness of the Vancouver Aquarium (VA) and Marineland Canada (MC).
Since on-site research is unavailable, a virtual tour is created to represent the interpretive
experiences in the two study sites. Self-administered questionnaires are used to measure
responses. Through comparing responses to the questionnaires (pre-, post-virtual tours
and follow-up), this study found that interpretation increased enjoyment and added to
respondents' knowledge. Although the changes in attitudes and intentions are not
significant, the findings indicate that attitude and intention changes did occur as a result
of interpretation, but only to a limited extent. Overall results suggest that more techniques
should be added to enhance the effectiveness of the interpretation in marine parks or
self-guiding tours, and with careful design, virtual tours are the innovative interpretation
techniques for marine parks or informal educational facilities