Concluding Comments 



requires exclusive use of parcels of 

 land and water, often competing with 

 other uses such as swimming, boat- 

 ing, fishing, and navigation. Although 

 well-established in a few estuaries, 

 aquaculture is not yet 

 encouraged by many 

 existing laws and regula- 

 tions governing private 

 access to public lands and 

 approved shellfish-growing 

 waters (South Carolina Sea 

 Grant Consortium, 1989). Without 

 increases in aquaculture it is likely that 

 harvests of estuarine molluscan 

 shellfish will continue to decline, as 

 they did in the 1990 statistical year 

 according to the most recent data 

 from the National Marine Fisheries 

 Service. 



Beyond 1990. Although reporting on 

 the classifications of shellfish-growing 

 waters began with the 1966 Register, 



/ Shellfish program manage- 

 ment resources were 

 reduced in half of the 

 Nation's shellfish-producing 

 states between 1 985 and 

 1990. 



data have only been collected and 

 analyzed on pollution sources, land- 

 ings, and state shellfish programs 

 since 1985. Thus, the inferences on 

 relationships between classification, 

 pollution sources, and 

 harvest are based most 

 heavily on a five-year 

 period between 1985 

 and 1990. Data 



y collection for the 1 995 



Register will begin in 

 late 1994. If trends reported in the 

 1990 Register continue, the 1995 

 Register will reveal further declines in 

 approved and conditionally approved 

 shellfish-growing waters, and in 

 harvests of wild stocks. Continued 

 declines in the resources necessary 

 for states to monitor, classify, and 

 manage waters may reduce further 

 the Nation's ability to sustain wild and 

 natural stocks of molluscan shellfish 

 by 1995. 



51 



