ABSTRACT
The conclusions that emerge from these case studies of fisheries management in Pacific Coast salmon industry are sobering indeed. In spite of millions of dollars poured into research, propagation, and regulatory activity, the resource is, at best, holding its own and in some areas is clearly subject to continuing depletion. Even in the few cases where stocks have been rebuilt, such as the Fraser River sockeye, the evidence is overwhelming that potential gains from the scientific and regulatory program have been largely if not entirely dissipated through excessive factor cost resulting from the inability to appropriate the economic rent that would accrue, under rational exploitation, to the owner—private or public—of the basic resource.
