Tom Swatzel, Capt. Dick's Marina, PO Box 306, Murrells Inlet, SC 29576

Abstract. "For hire" recreational fishing businesses such as head and charter boat operators face a dilemma of maintaining customer demand for fishing trips in the face of mounting fishery regulations. Most operators acknowledge their stake in healthy fish stocks for the future of their businesses, and as a result, understand the need for reasonable recreational fishery regulations. A problem is educating fishery management decision makers on the impacts of regulations on head and charter boat customers, and the overall importance of the industry to the local or regional economy.

Observations of customer behavior while purchasing fishing trips and engaged in fishing, provides good insight into the effects of size and/or bag limits on customer perception of a fishing trip's value. Without adequate information of this nature, fishery regulations can be crafted that might meet management objectives, but have an unnecessarily adverse impact on customer demand for trips.

On a federal level, the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act requires fishery councils to quantify the economic impacts of proposed regulations on user groups. In most fishery management plans, projected economic impacts on commercial users are listed to the dollar. However, there is little information available to quantify regulatory impacts on head and charter boat businesses and as a result, fishery management decision makers tend to look skeptically at the economic importance of recreational fishing businesses in implementing regulations.