One final introductory note is in order. The question of marine recreational 

 fishing benefits is far from a trivial one. Indeed, in the most careful and 

 widely circulated summary of existing water pollution control benefit studies, 

 marine recreational fishing looms very large, accounting for 24 percent of total 

 annual benefits from the application of best available treatment, BAT (Freeman 

 1979). This makes it the largest single source of benefits, larger even than 

 the sum of all diversion uses and three times larger than freshwater sport 

 fishing. This last comparison alone would be enough to call into question the 

 estimate of marine recreational fishing involved. Our knowledge of levels of 

 participation and of values attributed to days of each kind of fishing makes it 

 very unlikely that the result of changes in water quality could stand in this 

 relation. Improving our confidence in these benefit estimates could be very 

 important to the future of the water pollution control program. 



METHODOLOGY: A FRESHWATER STUDY AND 

 THE ROLE OF ECOLOGICAL MODELING 



The method we use for estimating benefits of water pollution control 

 accruing via sport fishing rests on the projection of changes in recreational 

 fishing availability or quality as links between the results of pollution 

 control policy and the decisions about fishing made by individuals. Thus, 

 pollution discharges are projected to be reduced because of policy implementa- 

 tion. Those reductions are translated into increased availability and attrac- 

 tiveness of recreational fishing resources; and the availability and attractive- 

 ness of these resources is taken into account by individuals in their decisions 

 whether and how much to engage in recreational fishing. 



In our freshwater study (Vaughn and Russell 1981) availability was measured 

 by surface acres, by state, of natural water bodies offering recreational 

 fishing opportunity; that is, supporting some fish population. Quality within 

 this total availability was indicated by dominant type of fish population 

 supported, because it seemed that recreational fishing activities aimed at 

 different species types might well involve both different decision relations 

 for the individuals involved and different values of the experiences. The key 

 observation here for freshwater fishing is that changes in the species distribution 

 of the fish population brought about by improvements in such indicators as 

 dissolved oxygen, suspended solids, and toxic chemical loads are themselves 

 classified as improvements by anglers. Thus, said very simply, clean water 

 means "game" fish (such as trout or bass), dirty water means "rough" fish (such 

 as carp, drum, or buffalo fish), and game fish are generally preferred to rough 

 fish by anglers. Thus, pollution control tends to increase the amount of water 

 yielding higher quality fishing relative to that yielding lower quality. 



Thus, our fundamental hypothesis is that discharge reductions ultimately 

 lead to increased numbers of fishing days per year. 3 Because those days are 

 valued at an amount greater than the sum of private (travel, tackle, etc.) and 

 public (fisheries management) costs of producing them, they represent part of 

 the benefit of the policy. A secondary hypothesis is that there will on average 



3 We assumed that if such population shifts could take place they would 

 take place, speeded along by state fish and game managers who share and reflect 

 the commonly accepted view of angler preferences (Vaughn and Russell 1981). 



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