off people who are dedicated public servants, as you obviously are, and remove, push further away from the local scene the responsibility for conservation.

Mr. NICKERSON. I understand exactly what you are saying. All I can say is that we have done a very poor job in preserving these lands heretofore and there are tremendous population pressures there and obviously the financial pressures are undoubtedly very great. They are particularly great and have an impact on local government. Mr. MORTON. Thank you very much.

Mr. DINGELL. Thank you very, very much, Mr. Nickerson. We deeply appreciate your testimony.

The Chair can hear very briefly Mr. Phil Douglas, executive secretary of the Sport Fishing Institute.

STATEMENT OF PHILIP A. DOUGLAS, EXECUTIVE SECRETARY, SPORT FISHING INSTITUTE

Mr. DOUGLAS. Mr. Chairman, members of this committee, I am Philip A. Douglas, executive secretary, Sport Fishing Institute, Washington, D.C., which is the only privately supported national fish conservation organization. The institute is wholly staffed by professional fishery scientists, fully cognizant of the great importance of the estuarine areas of the United States.

The Sport Fishing Institute fully recognizes that estuaries and estuarine areas, as defined in the proposed legislation embodied in H.R. 25, are among our most vital natural resources, the situations where much of our oceanic life originates.

About 65 percent of our Nation's commercial fish and shellfish and most marine sport fish species inhabit the estuarine environment during all or part of their life cycles. It is in estuaries where nutrients and spawning facilities for these vital marine fishery resources are greatest.

Estuaries also provide ingress to the aquatic highways through which our anadromous fishes must pass to ascend freshwater rivers and streams in order to reach ancestral spawning grounds.

The biological significance of estuaries, well recognized by scientists though poorly recognized by most laymen, was well documented for living marine resources in "A Symposium on Estuarine Fisheries," recently published by the American Fisheries Society, with substantial aid from Sport Fishing Institute—and others—designated Special Publication No. 3.

Along the northern and southern Atlantic coastal regions, five out of eight of the most frequently caught sport fish are dependent on estuaries; six out of eight are dependent on estuaries in the midAtlantic region. Both shellfish and finfish utilize such areas for spawning, nursery and/or feeding grounds.

Such areas are the key to our near-shore marine fisheries. Menhaden, neither a food nor a sport species, generate the largest commercial fishery in North America, and are dependent on these inshore nursery areas.

Estuaries are more numerous and the Continental Shelf more extensive on the Atlantic and gulf coasts than on the Pacific coast.

The steep shores of the Pacific coast slope quickly into deep waters severely restricting estuarine environments. The San Francisco Bay area is one of the most important estuarine complexes on the west coast.

The chronic often acute degradation of estuaries, resulting from man's continual alteration of the physical terrain and utilization of our rivers and streams for waste disposal, has already caused significant losses of these valuable natural resources. Man's inventive genius has severely challenged the ingenuity of sanitary engineers, not yet sufficiently successful to rid manufacturing effluents of highly toxic chemicals and heavy metals wastes. In many cases, much of these wastes remain hazardous upon reaching the sensitive estuarine areas. Moreover, the ability of mollusks such as oysters to concentrate pesticides in their tissues up to levels of some 10,000 times that of their aquatic environment, not to mention their capacity to extract disease pathogens from contaminated water, has made them potential killers

of man.

Much untreated sewage, in the process of decomposition, utilizes the water's supply of dissolved oxygen that would otherwise sustain aquatic animals. In addition, dredging and filling activities by industrial, commercial, and residential developers interested in relatively shortterm profits, have caused much havoc both by direct reduction of productive bottom area and by the destructive effects on aquatic life of resulting silt suspensions.

The latter may persist for long periods of time, eventually settling to the bottom where they smother many living organisms, thereby reducing the productive capacity of the estuary.

Although high values have been recognized for various seafoods, largely protein, and for various shore-bound forms of recreation, it is not yet generally recognized that the estuarine areas are the vital source of these values.

For example, with regard to the food and recreation fishery values involved, Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Fish, Wildlife, and Parks, Dr. Stanley A. Cain, in his statement on H.R. 13447 and H.R. 11236 last June before this committee stated:

In 1960 estuarine dependent sea food resources supported about 90,000 commercial fishermen to whom they yielded 2.8 billion pounds. This quantity was worth $59 million in the wholesale market. The resources yielded an additional 900,000 pounds to about 1,600,000 anglers. Evaluating recreational fishing as best we can it is conservatively estimated that the amount spent specifically for fishing, over and above normal living costs, amounted to some $163 million.

Thus, the collective fin fisheries that are dependent for their continued existence upon the present estuaries have an annual retail value, in terms of gross business generated, amounting to about $59 million times 3.3-$195 million-plus $163 million, or $358 million. The equivalent capital value-5-percent interest rate-therefore, is at least $7.16 billion.

In 1960, the Sport Fishing Institute supported a graduate research project at the University of Miami designed to evaluate the importance of sport fishing in Biscayne Bay, Dade County, Fla. The findings showed that approximately 500,000 fishermen-days occurred on Biscayne Bay annually.

At this minimal level, a fraction of actual potential bay angling generates at least $3 million in local business activity yearly, with a capital value of not less than $75 million-an important economic asset to the Miami area that could only suffer from any damage to fish breeding, nursery, and feeding areas that might result from any significant adverse alternation of the requisite estuarine environment. Economic yields from estuaries in the State of Maine, described in terms of dollars per year where scientific management practices have been followed, showed that the average annual crop of shellfish and bait worms harvested from each acre of estuary was worth $33,563 in the marketplace; where the stocks were unmanaged, the annual crop value per acre amounted to $15,750-by comparison the best market garden farms in Maine yield $2,000 crops per acre per year.

At a 5-percent interest rate, the capital values of those areas, based solely on the average yields of shellfish and annelid worms-not counting the added but unknown values of the dependent fin fisheries— is from $313,000 per acre to more than $671,000 per acre.

If the value of estuarine-dependent fin fisheries were added-unfortunately, not measured in this case-it is likely that the full capital value would exceed $1 million per acre of estuary.

The Federal Government has shown considerable interest in aiding the anadromous fishes of the Columbia River Basin to reach historical spawning grounds and for their offspring to return to the Pacific Ocean.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has spent some $87,250,000 in direct costs alone, over the past 35 years, not including planning, engineering, annual O. & M. costs, et cetera, to aid in facilities development to accomplish this.

Various pollutants, including erosion silt generated by logging operations, mining wastes, et cetera, work against and tend to minimize much of the corps' substantal efforts to mitigate the damage from this dam construction to major anadromous fisheries worth some $35 million annually to sport and commercial fishermen and Indians. At a 5percent interest rate, the current fishery has a capital value amounting to about $700 million.

Water development on lands in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, leading directly into the San Francisco Bay area and thence to sea, has historcally threatened fish and wildlife resources in that most important and productive west coast estuarine zone. A cooperative study between biologists and engineers to work out a fisheries protection and enhancement plan with respect to such development in that area has revealed that annual expenditures by anglers for goods and services used for fishing for anadromous fishes, alone, amounted to an estimated $27,700,000 annually.

There are many sources of figures relating to the value of the fish life of our various estuarine areas. The important thing to bear in mind is that annual harvests of renewable natural resources can be perpetual; thus serving thousands of generations of Americans, providing we take care of them properly, whereas economic uses that degarde, despoil, and reduce estuaries and estuarine zones are transitory, perhaps serving only two or three generations at best.

For instance, an economic developer of homesites might anticipate

their maximum life expectancy to be little more than 25 to 30 yearssome interesting figures could undoubtedly be developed around these points if desired. It therefore seems pertinent to consider in which circumstances the broad public interest will be served best.

The President's Science Advisory Committee reported in November 1965-"Restoring the Quality of Our Environment"-that there is a tremendous interplay between the land and water life in the estuarine Cited were the Georgia marshes which produce almost seven times as much organic matter per unit area as the Continental Shelf water, more than 20 times that of the deep sea, and six times more than the average wheat-producing fields.

Estuaries, being the funnels through which all land drainage flows, therefore the recipient of all human and industrial wastes, as well as all natural organic nutrient washings, can easily be damaged beyond recovery by dredge spoils dumped on or within these areas.

Their productivity depends on the concentrated inflow of natural nutrients; their degradation of destruction is geared largely to the deposition of fill generally associated with dredging and removal of the productive bottom. When we understand that almost a third of our people live within a 50-mile range of our coastlines, the tremendous pressures that are put on these precions estuarine areas can readily be recognized.

Few folks outside the scientific community appear to appreciate the considerable value of the natural resources of these coastal areas. Most folks have looked upon them in simple ignorance as wastelands— suited principally for abusive, short-term exploitation through dredging, filling, polluting, et cetera.

Best available estimates of losses of estuarine habitats due to dredging and filling along the U.S. coastal areas are as follows:

East coast including Florida-165,400 acres of a total 3,576,200 acres of basic important habitat;

Gulf coast excluding Florida-71,500 acres of a total 3,114,100 acres of basic important habitat;

West coast including Alaska-261,900 acres of a total 1,071,400 acres of basic important habitat. Of considerable significance is the loss to California, alone, of some 255,800 acres out of a total 381,900 acres, or 67 percent.

A consideration of the Great Lakes at this time, though true estuarine areas are not present in lakes, shows a loss of 4,300 acres of biologically productive shoreline to dredging and filling out of a total area of suitable habitat-shoal areas less than 6 feet deepamounting to 253,400 acres.

The above-noted losses cannot possibly give a representative picture of the far-reaching, overall denial of esturarine zones to aquatic life, greatly extended by other factors such as pollution in all its varied forms. This has undoubtedly taken a far greater toll of the vitally essential marine habitat represented by estuaries. Even so, it must be recognized that losses due to pollution afford some possibility of recovery, if slow, through comprehensive, vigorous pollution-abatement programs. The losses due to dredging and filling, for all practical considerations, may in constrast be regarded as permanent losses. An address presented by our executive vice president, Richard H.

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Stroud, at the 13th Annual Conference on Conservation Issues, sponsored by the National Wildlife Federation, in December 1966-a copy of this address is attached-emphasized the fact that conservation interests would be well advised to work closely with each other and with the responsible governmental agencies and interested legislators, to develop adequate means for properly managing estuarine areas.

Although I have pointed out the very high value of estuarinedependent fishery resources, the real issue here is not a matter of comparative economics. It really boils down to a moral questionwhether we will permit the uncontrolled dredging and filling and consequent pollution of these precious wetland areas for exclusive generation of short-term financial gains in various real estate and industrial development or whether we will insisit on adequate controls over developers to protect important estuarine resource values and create a nationwide estuarine system that will adequately protect the future heritage of coming generations of Americans.

A mere handful of coastal States have any sort of statutes that purport to control development of estuarine areas. Moreover, only one or two of these are adequate to protect the marine life contained therein.

Massachusetts, for example, appears to have potentially useful legal machinery in this respect. Because the vast majority of coastal States have inadequate or questionable legal machinery for the purpose, it appears necessary to strengthen Federal statutory authority in order to assure appropriate conservation considerations in these matters. Under existing circumstances and procedures, the Sport Fishing Institute firmly believes that the proposal in H.R. 25 to require issuance of permits for dredging by the U.S. Department of the Interior in addition to any other permits that are required will go far to assuring that conservation will be considered, and seems entirely reasonable. It is preposterous to us, and out of context with the times, to be issuing dredge and fill permits entirely on the basis of its possible impact on navigation-the prime consideration 68 years ago when the substantive Federal statute was adopted.

The SFI Bulletin for December 1966, in an article entitled "Developing and Managing Estuaries," points out and endorses specific proposals made by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission at its meeting in Portland, Maine, October 7, 1966, viz:

1. The objectives of estuarine management must be agreed upon. 2. An adequate inventory must be made of the estuaries and of their present and human uses.

3. Research must be intensified to provide the basis for rational decisions.

4. Controls must be established over the alterations which are occurring and those which will be proposed.

5. Immediate action should be carried out at all levels of government toward improved management.

At its semiannual meeting in Miami, Fla., on November 12, 1966, the board of directors of the Sport Fishing Institute adopted the following resolution for the protection and development of the estuaries: Whereas there currently are some eight million saltwater anglers fishing the coastal waters of these United States, whose expenditures generate some $800 million of gross business activity nationwide; and,