. Coast watch. Marine resources; Oceanography; Coastal zone management; Coastal ecology. Field Notes. Insights into Current Sea Grant Research Placing a Value on Recreational Resources Everything in today's society has a value. But when it comes to determining what clean water, pristine beaches and maritime forests are worth, it's not always easy to ring up a value on the cash register or the calculator. Knowing there's no direct method for assessing the value of such natural assets, Sea Grant researchers Kerry Smith and Ray Palmquist, economists in the Resource and Environmental Economics Pro
. Coast watch. Marine resources; Oceanography; Coastal zone management; Coastal ecology. Field Notes. Insights into Current Sea Grant Research Placing a Value on Recreational Resources Everything in today's society has a value. But when it comes to determining what clean water, pristine beaches and maritime forests are worth, it's not always easy to ring up a value on the cash register or the calculator. Knowing there's no direct method for assessing the value of such natural assets, Sea Grant researchers Kerry Smith and Ray Palmquist, economists in the Resource and Environmental Economics Program at State University, have devised some indirect ways. First, they began studying surveys of recreational fishermen to determine how the fish caught during fishing trips could be linked to water quality. They also assessed how the prospects for different fishing conditions affected the quality of the anglers' fishing experiences, their choice of fishing locations and the amount of money they spent. They fed the information into sophisticated economic models that could attach values to improvements in water quality. "Because our models incorporated fishing party decisions that were based on the quality of the available fishing spots, we can use them to assess what it's worth to improve water quality at specific locations," Smith says. The researchers looked at fishing in the Albemarle-Pamlico estuarine system, including the Tar-Pamlico River. They deter- mined how effluent from factories and farms along the river affected fishing quality and people's decisions about where to fish. Using their findings, they were able to say how much people would pay for reductions in pollution from factories or the implementation of farm practices to reduce nutrient runoff. "Changes in the quality of environmental resources can be valued even when they are freely accessible," Smith says. "The true value of such changes can be measured by what people would pay to
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