The elimination of Louisiana from the reef fishery by the model is

not surprising since the Louisiana fishery has been characterized by

very low average productivity per vessel. Also, preliminary data for

1976 indicate that no reef fish vessels operated out of Louisiana ports.

 The number of vessels operating out of ports in Alabama and

Mississippi increase significantly in percentage terms as a result of

profit maximization in the fishery. This may, however, be a result of

aggregation across species in estimating the catch equations since

Florida, Alabama and Mississippi vessels fish the same general areas.

Further, the reef fish vessels in the Panhandle region of Florida are

primarily red snapper vessels with fishing power characteristics very

similar to those in Alabama and Mississippi (Cato and Prochaska, 1977).

Thus, the apparent increases in vessel numbers in these two states may

be considered as being composed of Florida vessels with little effect on

aggregate profit in the fishery. In terms of the overall model, the

implication is that vessel numbers in Alabama and Mississippi under MEY

regulation could be maintained at 1975 levels while the number of

Florida vessels would have to be reduced to only 149 vessels as opposed

to 136 shown in Table 12.

 The estimated optimum number of vessels necessary to capture MEY

is expressed in terms of actual or nominal vessels. In order to facili-

tate further discussion, it is convenient to express this nominal mea-

sure of fishing effort in standardized terms. Doing so not only enables

effort levels to be directly compared across states and over time, but

also enables a comparison to be made between the MEY levels of fishing

effort and those utilized in estimating traditional sustainable yield

curves. By multiplying the number of vessels in each state necessary to