155 



in the favored areas, as do other overnight recreational activities. 

 Table IV.2.3 gives the advantages and disadvantages of several in- 

 dices of recreational economic impact ; as this table shows, there is no 

 single satisfactory index for showing the importance of the cstuarine 

 zone in recreation, or vice versa. 



In many cases the economic value of recreation may depend upon 

 the total economic structure of a particular estuarine system. For 

 example, the Biscayne Bay area in Florida is oriented toward the 

 recreational pursuits of the vacationing tourist; the useful indexes 

 of recreational activity here would be motel, hotel, charter boat, and 

 marina revenues. Tlie shoreline of the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, 

 in contrast, is almost entirely oriented toward private residences or 

 commercial marinas catering to the regional resident, who needs per- 

 manent boat mooring facilities. 



The significant indexes of recreational activity here would be boat 

 sales and repairs, marina revenues, and waterfront property values. 



Attempts at the quantification of overall recreational economic 

 values are not yet well-developed. The user-day recreation benefits ap- 

 proach has been used in some Federal waterway and reservoir projects, 

 but has been used in the estuarine system only in an analysis of fish- 

 eries and recreation in San Francisco Bay. Net benefits for general 

 recreation activities, by this method, range from 50 cents to $1.50 

 per day. Specific forms of recreation may have higher values. 



Applying such a figure to the population of the coastal counties 

 suggests that the value of the recreational resource of the estuarine 

 zone is about $300 million if each person has about 5 days of recrea- 

 tional use. Such an estimate would include only local use and no 

 multiplier values and might therefore be regarded as minimum value 

 of the entire value of the entire estuarine recreation resource. 



The major problems in defining the economic values of recreation 

 in the estuarine zone lie in the facts that recreation itself is not an 

 easily defined commodity nor can it be isolated from other economic 

 activities such as transportation, food and lodging services, and 

 equipment manufacturing. 



COMMERCIAL NAVIGATION AND NATIONAL DEFENSE 



The economic value of commercial navigation is easier to establish 

 than the value of any other activity. Even here, however, there is 

 impact of this use on other estuarine uses, and the estimates of eco- 

 nomic value are not complete. Estimates of the economic value of 

 commercial navigation are based on the direct revenue to the port of 

 handling a ton of cargo, generally $16 to $20. Such estimates lead to 

 a total value of the estuarine resource of $4.7 billion annually for car^o 

 revenues alone, without multiplier values. An additional economic 

 value of $10 billion annually in salaries and wages has been estimated 

 for the 11 major ports listed in table TV. 2.5. 



These estimates do not show the impact of commercial navigation 

 on land transportation, shoreline development, or the manufacturing 

 industries. Without the deep, safe harbors commercial navigation could 

 not exist on a large scale, and without commercial navigation the great 

 cities around these harbors would not have developed. 



Deep-water hatbors are essential elements of the national defense 

 system. Furthermore, the location of these deep-water ports has in- 



