Bar Reef in Sri Lanka is a complex marine ecosystem, which consists of near shore coral reefs, sea grass beds and associated ecosystems rich in biodiversity. It provides a number of ecosystem services and of those, provisioning and cultural services generate market-based values. The ecosystem is under the risks of degradation due to rising demand for edible fish and other sea food species, aquarium fish and products such as chanks, which has increased the extraction of provisioning services from Bar Reef area. In addition to over-exploitation, destructive practices used for extracting fisheries is particularly damaging to the ecosystem services associated with regulating and supporting functions. The study makes an attempt to undertake an assessment to identify a lower-bound value for the conservation of ecosystem services offered by Bar Reef.
