Monetary valuation of recreational fishing in a restored estuary and implications for future management measures

Abstract

Recreational fishing is considered a cultural ecosystem service, important in terms of the socio-economic benefits that it provides. In the Nerbioi estuary (northern Spain), investments in water treatment and the closure of polluting industries have led to several benefits such as improvements in water quality, fish abundance and richness, and recreational fishing activity. Currently, this activity is performed along the whole estuary including areas that previously were severely polluted. Valuing the benefits of recreational fishing is crucial to support the management of the estuary. The economic valuation is performed using a multi-site travel cost analysis. In addition, the effect on welfare measures of future scenarios where environmental conditions and accessibility change is analysed. Results indicate that each recreational trip in Nerbioi has a use value of 14.98€, with an aggregate value of 1.12 M€year−1 for the whole recreational fishers’ community. The simulated scenarios suggest that further environmental improvements would have a positive effect in the activity, increasing the current welfare by 7.5–11.5%. In contrast, worsening of environmental conditions and accessibility could translate into a welfare reduction up to 71%. The monetary use value of recreational fishing partially covers (4.7%) the costs of maintaining the environmental quality of the estuary.

#OceanOptimism: Balancing the Narrative About the Future of the Ocean

“…A more detailed analysis of one system, the Nervión estuary, documented not only the physical and biological recovery but also the recovery of ecosystem services and societal benefits, namely, recreational fishing and the use of beaches for sunbathing and sports. These services have been studied under three perspectives: environmental (Pouso et al, 2019), social (Pouso et al, 2018a;Pouso et al, 2018b), and economic (Pouso et al, 2018c;Pouso et al, 2021). The increase in recreational fishing has followed the physico-chemical recovery of the system, especially in terms of dissolved oxygen and also in the recolonization of the inner estuary by fish (Pouso et al, 2019), with increasing individual catches.…”

An Interdisciplinary Approach for Valuing Changes After Ecological Restoration in Marine Cultural Ecosystem Services

“…quality (Pouso et al, 2018a(Pouso et al, , 2019b. However, the high percentage of locals among users, who do not have to invest great time or money to reach the recreational places, resulted in a relatively low monetary value per visit, compared to similar case studies in the literature (Ariza et al, 2012;Alves et al, 2017).…”

“…Traditionally, studies on ecosystem services have focused on assessing the instrumental values [or "things that are means to some external end" (Himes and Muraca, 2018)], and this has been done through diverse monetary valuation techniques (Turner and Schaafsma, 2015). In Nerbioi, the instrumental values of the two recreational activities were assessed (Pouso et al, 2018a(Pouso et al, , 2019b using the Travel Cost Method (Parsons, 2003), which has been extensively used to value recreational services. The information that econometric tools provide can be valuable; still, ecosystem services should not be valued exclusively with monetary techniques as their result is insufficient to represent the many ways in which people benefit from nature (Chan et al, 2012b).…”

“…For analyzing the demand side, available data on the current and past number of beach recreationalists and recreational fishers were collected [for details, see Pouso et al (2018aPouso et al ( , 2019b]. Data on the number of beach visitors were collected in summer period (from June to September) by the regional Government of Bizkaia since 2013.…”

“…The travel cost analysis performed to estimate the value of the two activities, estimated a current aggregated-use value of 4.65 M€ year −1 (Tables 3, 4). This amount covers all the maintenance and service costs associated to beach recreation (e.g., sampling and analysis of bathing waters, rescue services) and an important amount of the sewage system running costs [more information available in Pouso et al (2018aPouso et al ( , 2019b].…”