has been set at approximately 23 million pounds. The total of these

estimates, 39.0 million pounds, originally led the Management Council to

conclude that the fishery, based on data through 1974, is currently

operating very near maximum sustainable yield in aggregate. In terms of

the recreational and commercial sectors, however, the council has con-

cluded the overfishing may be present in the areas frequented by

recreationists and, conversely, the stocks subject to commercial fishing

may be underfished (GMRFF, 1979).

 The analysis of the current study was restricted solely to the

domestic commercial reef fish fishery. The exclusion of the recrea-

tional sector in the analysis resulted from the lack of recreational

data suitable for meaningful econometric analysis. This, however,

should not effect the results concerning the commercial fishery to any

great extent. From a technical production standpoint, the commercial

and recreational fisheries are substantially independent. While there

is ubdoubtedly some biological interaction between the reef fish stocks

fished by these two groups, it is highly probable that this interaction

is, to a large extent, independent of fishing activities.

 The results of this study have led to the conclusion that the

commercial reef fishery has moved beyond the point of MSY for the com-

mercial reef fish stocks. This is contrary to the findings of the Gulf

Management Council which suggest that a catch of about 16.0 million

pounds by commercial fishermen is sustainable. The maximum sustainable

yield estimate derived for the commercial reef in this study was set at

13.7 million pounds. Based on this estimate, a commercial catch of

16.0 million pounds is not sustainable and would result in a decline in