long-term basis would far surpass 

 their short-term value for building 

 roads or for other purposes. 



This is no less true for the 

 wetlands which provide nursery 

 grounds for the shrimp, the blue 

 crab, and the finfish. During the 

 past few decades, these areas have 

 been destroyed, bit by bit, a few 

 acres there, and a not so few acres 

 which could have been destroyed had 

 the Wallisville Reservoir project 

 been carried out to completion. As 

 one environmentalist puts it, we have 

 "nickled and dimed our estuaries to 

 death." While I recognize that the 

 subject matter of this symposium is 

 the importance of freshwater inflow, 

 my point is this: if the estuaries 

 are destroyed by dredging and fill- 

 ing, then what good would it do to 

 have the freshwater inflow? 



During the battle with the shell 

 dredgers, they made the point that 

 Galveston Bay was so polluted and 

 that so much of it was off limits due 

 to high levels of coliform that they 

 might as well be permitted to dredge 

 out the reefs. My positions was that 

 pollution can be cleaned up, and 

 there would be little point in clean- 

 ing up pollution if the entire eco- 

 system had been damaged beyond repair 

 by its physical impairment. My argu- 

 ment has been borne out as a valid 

 one. Today, the biochemical oxygen 

 demand flow into the Houston Ship 

 Channel is only about 70,000 pounds 

 daily, where a decade ago it was ap- 

 proximately 300,000 pounds. So we 

 must not let permanent destruction 

 go unchecked because a temporary sit- 

 uation prevents their use by mankind. 



The economic value of our wet- 

 lands can be looked at from two view- 

 points: one, its production of com- 

 mercial species of marine life; and 

 second, its production of species 



which are harvested by the recrea- 

 tional fishermen. First, let me dis- 

 cuss the shrimp fishery, for this is 

 the one that I know most about. Thou- 

 sands of residents along the Texas 

 gulf coast make their livelihood, or 

 part of it, from the shrimp fishery. 

 In 1979, shrimpers landed 41,604,000 

 pounds of this delicacy at Texas 

 ports, worth $153,115,000 ex-vessel 

 value. By the time this harvest 

 reached the dinner tables of America, 

 it was worth about three times that 

 or approximately $500,000,000. Loui- 

 siana fishermen landed 50,125,000 

 pounds, with an ex-vessel value of 

 $115,282,000 or $345,000,000 final 

 value. The other three states front- 

 ing on the Gulf of Mexico landed a 

 total of 35,322,000 pounds, ex- 

 vessel value of $109,245,000, or 

 $327,600,000 final retail value. 



The total landings from the Gulf 

 of Mexico amounted to 127,049,000 

 pounds, worth $377,642,000 at boat- 

 side, or a whopping $1,133,000,000 

 dollars final retail value. In the 

 entire nation, only 202,717,000 

 pounds of shrimp were landed, with an 

 ex-vessel value of $471,573,000. This 

 means, then, that our gulf landings 

 amounted to 62.2 percent of the total 

 American catch and just a little more 

 than 80 percent of the ex-vessel val- 

 ue of the U.S. harvest. Just one 

 little reminder here: all of these 

 shrimp spend some part of their life 

 in the areas that we all are inter- 

 ested in protecting our estuaries. 



The second economic value we 

 place on our estuaries is their 

 productivity of species important to 

 the recreational fishery. The two 

 most important of those species are 

 the spotted weakfish, known in Texas 

 as the speckled trout, and the 

 channel bass, which we call the red 

 drum or redfish. Speckled trout 

 spawn in the estuaries, while the 

 redfish spawns just offshore, and 



