Discourse about marine protected areas (MPAs) typically centers around fisheries and biodiversity but rarely considers tourism. This is surprising given that marine and coastal tourism contributes four times the value of fisheries to the global ocean economy. Here, I will demonstrate the potential of placing dive sites in MPA to simultaneously generate ecological and economic benefits, while also improving the tourism experience. By developing a fully parameterized bioeconomic model, I will show that placing all the dive sites in MPAs yields large ecological and economic benefits.