Franklin County, Fla., is dependent upon pollution-free waters in 

 Apalachicola Bay for its economic existence. The unpolluted waters 

 of the bay provide the seafood caught by local commercial fishermen 

 and processed at shore-based installations. Additional income for the 

 area results from tourism engendered by the bay's waters. 



Both tourism and commercial fishing are prime potential sources of 

 income to any estuarine system. In the case of Apalachicola Bay, these 

 happen to be the major sources of income because of the nature of the 

 estuary and its location which prevent its development as a commercial 

 shipping facility. 



The San Diego economy, although heavily dependent upon the mili- 

 tary and shipping activities in the bay, has diversified to the extent 

 that it is no longer completely dependent upon such uses of the bay. 

 At the same time there has been a growing demand for recreational 

 uses of the bay. Evidence of the local residents' interest in the bay for 

 recreation, tourism, and commercial uses can be found in their will- 

 in^ess to invest substantial sums of money in facilities to prevent pol- 

 lution of the bay by municipal wastes. 



Mission Bay, a separate ^uary in the San Diego area, is an example 

 of the recreational potential to be found in an estuarine system. How- 

 ever, this special study points up the fact that the best use of an 

 estuary may not come about naturally. Rather, it shows that a planned 

 development program with adequate investments are necessary to 

 achieve optimal use of an estuary. 



Measv/res of overall value and importance 



The discussions of values of individual uses and the case studies of 

 specific estuarine systems present a confusing picture of the relation- 

 ship of estuarine uses to economic indicators. 



Estimates of the direct economic benefit of the estuarine zone to the 

 residents of the coastal counties can be made. The estimates of economic 

 activity generated by the presence of Narragansett Bay in Rhode Is- 

 land give a conservative annual economic benefit of $920 per capita, 

 $420 of which is personal income. Average personal income for all of 

 the coastal counties is, according to Bureau of the Census figures, $500 

 per capita greater than the average for the remainder of the country. 

 The total economic activity generated by this additional personal in- 

 come then amounts to about $1,100 per person, using the Narrag- 

 ansett Bay multiplier values. 



The total direct economic benefit of the estuarine zone to the resi- 

 dents of the coastal counties is then about $60 billion in terms of 

 additional economic activity stimulated by the presence of estuarine 

 systems. This is not a measure of the total economic activity of the 

 estuarine zone, but only of the "value added" to the total economic 

 activity of the coastal counties by the presence of the estuarine zone. 



Such gross means can give only an order-of -magnitude estimate of 

 even the direct economic value of the estuarine zone and cannot pos- 

 sibly reflect either indirect benefits or the social importance of the 

 estuarine zone, much less its ecological value. 



Valid criteria for evaluating the importance of the estuarine en- 

 vironment or the value of individual estuarine uses, to a community 

 must, however, go beyond the reach of economic approximation and 

 recognize the fundamental relationship between man and his en- 



