ALBERT

Description: Despite an absence of freshwater exploitation, the adult salmon run in the Matamek River, Quebec, declined during 1975-1980 to 〈23% of the level thought to occur there prior to 1967. Returns in 1979 and 1980 of adults tagged as smolts were 1.0% and 0.9%, respectively. Numbers of emigrating smolts and their corresponding adult returns are not significantly correlated, although we observed a trend towards more salmon (2 sea year fish) returning with larger numbers of migrating smolts. Since 1967 there is noted a decrease in the age at which returning adults smolted and females appear to now constitute a larger percentage of returning grilse and salmon. These, and other changes in life history characteristics, appear to be caused solely by commercial exploitation.

Description: Prepared by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the Department of Recreation, Fish and Game of the Province of Quebec.

Description: Volatile organic compounds (VOC) have been determined in Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island, water samples as part of an investigation into the sources, fates, and transport of volatile organic compounds in estuarine and coastal seawater. This report tabulates the concentrations of a wide range of VOC along a transect 1n Narragansett Bay for two summer and two winter sampling cruises.

Description: Funding was provided by the Environmental Protection Agency under Grants R8060?212 and CR807795 to the Marine Ecosystems Research Laboratory ~ University of Rhode Island.

Description: This report represents a first step at considering the potential for the use of market-based incentives to aid in the resolution of fishery bycatch problems. Market-based incentives have several advantages over more traditional command-and-control approaches, including cost-effective allocations of environmental controls; incentives for firms to seek technological solutions; flexibility; returns to the public for the use of its resources; and lower administrative costs in some cases. Notwithstanding these advantages and with several notable exceptions, market-based incentives are almost never employed in the management of fishery bycatch problems. There may be several reasons why this is the case, including significant distributional effects, high costs of monitoring and enforcement, difficulties in educating consumers about product attributes, administrative and transactions costs, or merely oversight. We consider this report to be an "advanced outline" of the issues surrounding the consideration of market-based incentives. We begin first by developing in Section 2 a definition of bycatch, including a "typology" of bycatch types. Next, we compile available public information on bycatch in U.S. fisheries, as defined by target species, location, and gear type (Section 3 and Appendix 1). We then review, in Section 4, two potentially relevant strands of literature, the economic theory of multispecies fisheries and studies from other social sciences of how small-scale fisheries deal with problems of bycatch. In Section 5, we describe, in general, the kinds of market-based policy instruments that may be of use in managing bycatch problems. Following this evaluation, we identify and discuss, as case studies; three priority fisheries: th~ northeastern groundfish fishery; the Gulf of Mexico shrimp fishery; and the eastern tropical Pacific yellowfin tuna fishery (Section 6). Finally, in Section 7, we outline approaches to identifying appropriate policy instruments, including a qualitative comparison of market-based approaches, an examination of the effect of specific types of uncertainty on the choice between taxes and ITQs, and the development of a "proposal" for a bycatch management "policy package." This section concludes with a proposal for a set of priority market-based approaches to bycatch management in the three cases discussed in Section 6.

Description: NOAA Contract No. 50-DGNF-5-00172

Description: Mytilus edulis, Mytilus californianus, Crassostrea virginica and Ostrea equestris were sampled at 90 to 100 stations around the United States coastline during each of three years- 1976, 1977, 1978. Data for concentrations of PCB, DDE, total hydrocarbons, gas chromatographically unresolved complex mixture hydrocarbons, and selected aromatic hydrocarbons are presented for most of the samples. Similar data for monthly samples of Mytilus edulis from Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island, U.S.A. and Mytilus californianus from Bodega Head, California, U.S.A. and laboratory intercalibrations are presented and discussed. Monthly temporal changes of factors of two to ten were found for ·organic pollutants in mussels from the Narragansett Bay station. Concentrations of PCBs and fossil fuel hydrocarbons for some urban stations were one to two orders of magnitude higher than those in remote areas. The northeast "megapolis" of the U.S. coast from the Chesapeake Bay area to Boston, Massachusetts clearly shows elevated concentrations of PCBs and fossil fuel hydrocarbons. The composition of aromatic hydrocarbons in samples with elevated concentrations shows both the influence of oil spill or chronic oil inputs and pyrogenic sources.

Description: Prepared for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as part of a subcontract from Grant R 8042-15 to Scripps Institution of Oceanography and for the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for a grant to the Coastal Research Center.