Study: Oil spill caused $585 million in losses for recreational fishermen

Study: Oil spill caused $585 million in losses for recreational fishermen | AL.com

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Study: Oil spill caused $585 million in losses for recreational fishermen

http://imgick.al.com/home/bama-media...s/10756119.pngBy Michael Finch II | mfinch@al.com
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on September 18, 2014 at 3:04 PM, updated September 18, 2014 at 7:11 PM

The dollar figure recreational fishermen lost as a result of canceled trips after the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is around $585 million, according to a report by the Gainesville Sun.
The article details the findings of a study conducted by researchers from a number of universities, including the University of Florida. Scientists used data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, as well as location preferences to put a dollar amount on the combined loss.
The study may be used for the Natural Resources Damage Assessment, an ongoing process to determine the widespread impact of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf.
The article also mentioned Orange Beach fisherman Troy Frady, who said he lost 38 out of 42 of the scheduled fishing trips in the months following the spill.
In an emailed statement, BP refuted the finding, saying that researchers "made a significant mistake in their calculations," said Jason Ryan, a spokesman for BP.
Read the full report here. (see next post below)
Update: This story was updated to include comments from a BP spokesman and to clarify that the study may be used for the Natural Resources Damage Assessment on Sept. 18 at 4:04 p.m.

UF helps assess the economic hit taken from BP oil spill | Gainesville.com

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By Jeff SchweersStaff writer

Published: Saturday, September 13, 2014 at 7:58 p.m.

Last Modified: Saturday, September 13, 2014 at 7:58 p.m.

Fishing boat captain Troy Frady of Orange Beach, Alabama, lost a summer of fishing tours after the Deepwater Horizon blowout of April 2010 killed 11 workers, spewed 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico and forced the shutdown of lucrative fishing areas.

Frady canceled between 38 and 42 fishing trips in the six months following the largest oil spill disaster in U.S. history.
"They shut down fishing from the middle of June until October," Frady said. "Everybody was locked out."
The spill forced him and his fellow fishermen into other professions temporarily, and the subsidies BP paid out through the Vessels of Opportunity program helped him and a lot of other people dependent on the fishing and tourism industry along the Gulf Coast from Mississippi to Florida.
"BP got everybody through the winter, dumping $7 million into our local economy," Frady said.
The customers were very understanding about the whole situation. "They didn't like having to cancel their fishing trips but they hated to see us go through this," Frady said.
They all came back the next year, in 2011, but for those six months when the fishing zones were shut down, the economic losses added up.
The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration has been working with researchers and scientists on the Natural Resources Damage Assessment to total up just how big a hit the region took economically. Commercial fishermen, oyster harvesters, boat captains, hotels, restaurants and other tourism-centric businesses took it hard, and BP has already paid out $4.5 billion in fees and fines, with more bills likely to come.
But there was an equally tangible loss to recreational anglers, too, according to a study by researchers from the University of Florida, Appalachian State University, Ohio State University and the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.
They estimated about $585 million in recreational fishing opportunities were lost as a result of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, said UF food and resource economics professor Sherry Larkin.
In the first study to evaluate the cost of recreational fishing losses, Larkin and her colleagues used economic modeling to estimate the value placed on those lost opportunities following the 2010 spill.
For her study, which was published online in July in the Journal of Environmental Management, Larkin and her research team interviewed people and used data from the Marine Recreational Information Program accumulated from 350,000 trips between 2006 and 2010, she said. That sample is a fraction of the 40 million fishing trips taken in the Southeast each year.
"It was based on data in the past on people's choices in fishing sites and the quality of those sites," Larkin said.
The $585 million represents the estimated loss of those trips canceled or postponed after fisheries were shut down because of the spill, she said.
"It's actually a loss of economic value associated with recreational fishing activity," she said.
While it is not as straightforward as calculating the loss to commercial fishing industry, it is a very real and tangible number, she said.
The methodology of resource economics is to estimate the value of our common natural resources, Larkin said. The methodology was established early on to determine the value placed on national parks to show they are a worthwhile investment, she said.
A good analogy to recreational loss would be what happened following the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska. One of the largest Exxon Valdez settlements was $20 billion for the "loss of existence value," she said.
Everyone in the lower 48 states was affected by the impact on the integrity of the ecosystem, so the trustees of all the owners of that common property resource — the federal government, tribal councils and the like — were compensated by the same mechanism that Larkin used to determine the loss of recreational fishing value.
Likewise, people who like to fish in the Florida Panhandle or the Louisiana bayou were affected when the fisheries shut down, she said.
"Money goes toward making those people whole," she said. "How do you make those people whole? One mechanism is to improve recreational experiences to offset what they lost … whatever stakeholders say could enhance their recreational experience."
Jason Ryan, a spokesman for BP America, claims the researchers made a $500 million mistake in their calculations, which Ryan said the researchers were told about weeks ago.
"The correct formula for calculating this type of recreational use injury has been used by environmental economists for decades, and is published in numerous journals and textbooks, including a textbook written by one of the co-authors of this paper," Ryan said in an email to The Sun. "Instead of using this approach, the authors used an incorrect formula that violates accepted economic procedure and adds more than $500 million to their damage estimate."
Regardless, Ryan said, the ongoing Natural Resource Damage Assessment is the process that will evaluate potential loss of recreational use of natural resources caused by the spill. "Until that process is complete, it is premature to speculate about the value of any alleged lost use," he said.
Larkin said her group did get a call from a BP-hired consultant but stands by the figures published in the journal article that arrives at a damage estimate of just under $600 million.
"Our study was not intended to provide an estimate for the legal process," Larkin said. "As such, we can understand where different stakeholders would argue for different assumptions, both those that would increase the estimate and those that would reduce it."
To help clarify things, she and her colleagues talked to the editor of the journal and attached an addendum to the original article.
Ben Sherman, a spokesman for NOAA Ocean Services, said Larkin's study, like all spill-related studies, "may be considered in making final determinations of a proposed way forward." But because of the ongoing Natural Resource Damage Assessment, he said he could not offer any further comment.
"The NRDA is a legal environmental science-based study to determine the damages caused by the respective parties and how those damages might be corrected," Sherman said.
Larkin said she was encouraged that her study could be used in helping to make those final determinations.
Frady said his only concern is what's best for replenishing the fisheries and making the people in the fishing industry whole. Any money obtained to compensate for the loss of recreational fishing trips should be used to build artificial reefs, and offshore fish-attracting devices, and for data collection in the reef and Gulf fisheries.
Frady said he would also like to see it used to monitor the harvesting of fish and make more frequent stock assessments, "especially to make sure recreational fishers don't go over their quotas.
"I just want to fish," Frady said. "BP forced me to seek other income that summer and that is something that I should not have had to do, and they should pay for that."

I personally cancelled a 1 week summer trip and a 2 week fall trip that year. For the three weeks cancelled that meant I did not spend about $3,000 to $3,600 in the local Gulf Shores/Orange Beach area. I am sure there are many other people similar to me.

We cancelled a 10 day- 9 night trip for Labor Day since the gulf was closed to fishing. Panama City raked in a lot of coin from the Alabama beaches being closed to swimming and fishing.