Recreational Boating in Virginia: a preliminary analysis

Increasingly, recreational boating and its supporting industries are being affected by governmental policy and regulatory and allocation decisions. Clearly, those charged with making these decisions cannot understand the impacts of their decisions on related business, individuals, and their livelihoods without possessing some knowledge of the general linkages between boating and local economies. This initial estimate of the economic impacts of boating in Virginia is a first step in that direction. Hopefully, a better knowledge of the nature, recent growth and present magnitude of boating in the Commonwealth will insure that decisions made which influence its existence will be\u27based on the best information possible

Development and implementation of a catch and effort data collection system for monitoring trends in fishing success on Virginia\u27s artificial fishing reefs, 1987-1988 : for the period January 1, 1988 - December 31, 1988

The basic objective of the study was to identify a core population of recreational fishermen owning private boats and fishing one or more Virginia artificial reefs or other popular wreck fishing sites (Figure land Table l) with some degree of regularity (making a minimum of two or three reef trips per season). This population of fishing boat owners would be sampled randomly, by either telephone or fishing log books, to determine fishing effort and catch rates characterizing trips made to specific reef and other popular wreck fishing sites during the 1987 fishing season. Examination of the resulting data would determine whether fishing activity on all, or a limited number of reef and wreck fishing sites, would be sampled during the study\u27s second year. The sample population of reef and wreck fishermen would also be expanded in year two of the study