Pat Judge, an avid sport fisherman, has been walking around with a $500 check in his pocket for a week, trying to decide whether to cash it. That’s because the money comes with a catch: Judge must agree to turn in his $10 recreational saltwater fishing license for the year.
In an unusual experiment being conducted only in Massachusetts, the federal government is surveying anglers to figure out how much it would cost to persuade Judge and 1,899 others not to fish off the coast.
But officials say the purpose is not to actually reduce fishing. Instead, they say, the survey is intended to measure the worth of recreational saltwater fishing to the estimated 1.2 million residents and visitors who do it annually.
Read the complete story from The Boston Globe.