Recreational fishing is enjoyed by millions of anglers worldwide.
While a vast amount of economic analysis has focused on recreational fishing, fishery managers continue to struggle with the concepts of economic value, impact analysis, and benefit-cost analysis. This symposium will bring together economists government agencies, the private sector, and academics to address the allocation of fishery resources to the recreational sector. A second group of presentations will consider new methodologies for estimating the benefits of recreational fishing, including demand models of recreational fishing in Maine, Michigan, and California and an analysis of compensatory restoration programs for damages to fishing resources due to hazardous substances. The third portion of the Symposium will focus on national applications of economic analysis to recreational fisheries including the National Marine Fisheries Service's efforts to estimate the value of marine recreational fishing in the Northeast and Southeast United States. International applications include studies of recreational fishing in Namibia, the Nordic countries, and Canada.