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determinants of recreational benefits. At the extreme, if success ratios 

 have zero effect on recreational benefit measures then one need not consider 

 recreational fishing in allocating fish stock between commercial fishing and 

 sports fishing. Other issues need to be explored. For example, if sports 

 fishing effort is determined in part by the maximum size of the fish rather 

 than the average catch per outing, the OSY will be quite different. 

 Similarly, it may well be that many sports anglers derive much more pleasure 

 from catching the fish than keeping them. In the extreme, all fish caught 

 by sports anglers could be thrown back in, suggesting that OSY could be 

 determined purely on economic grounds, without regard to the population 

 dynamics. 



While this extreme case is probably not significant, it serves to 

 illustrate the nature of the comparisons or trade-offs to be made and the 

 conceptual difficulties which must be resolved in designing a data collection 

 system. For this reason, it is suggested that studies be initiated through 

 universities. The purpose of these studies would be to clarify some of the 

 issues and to demonstrate valid measurement procedures covering conceptual 

 issues, data specification, collection methodology and methods for analyzing 

 the data obtained. If successful methodologies can be demonstrated, a 

 comprehensive data collection system can be considered in the future. 



D. Summary of Section III 



Based on the discussions in Section III, there are seven areas in 

 which additional economic data are needed. These areas are vessel inventories, 

 costs and earnings data, vessel construction costs, demand analysis data, size, 

 employment opportunities and skills of the labor force, fisheries development 

 and recreational fishing benefits. 



