The ex-vessel coho salmon market has been paid scant attention in the study of the salmon resources. This study is an attempt to advance an understanding of the variations of ex-vessel prices and landings during the coho season as well as between the various coastal ports where the fish is landed. This study presents an empirical analysis of the ex-vessel port markets for coho salmon in Oregon and Washington. The objectives of the study are to investigate the variation in landings and prices during the fishing season and to compare those differences between ports for both states. This study focuses on the determination of the ex-vessel price mechanism and the decision behavior of coho fishermen in their choice of ports to land the catch. An economic model of each port is developed to explain the buying behavior of processors and the selling behavior of fishermen. Each port is treated as a distinctive market subject to external changes in the abundance of coho, the conditions of the wholesale markets, and the responsiveness of fishermen to prices in other ports. Several econometric models are constructed to determine the distinctive characteristics of the Oregon and Washington ex-vessel port markets. The demand and supply at the different ports are estimated by applying regression analysis to 32 different sets of data. These data include a single year (1976) of transaction records for the twelve Oregon ports, and four years (1973-1976) of landings records for the five Washington coastal ports. Three different models are used; a simultaneous equations model, a recursive model, and a single equation model. The major findings in the study are as follows: the ex-vessel demand in most Oregon or Washington ports is highly elastic, which suggests that changes in seasonal landings at a port do not have any significant impact on the ex-vessel price. While fishermen and other industry observers have noted differences in seasonal ex-vessel price between ports, such differences do not appear to exist. Average seasonal price differences between ports do not vary when appropriate weights are applied to the average price calculations. The size (in pounds) of the coho salmon plays a major role in the determination of the intraseasonal ex-vessel demand at all ports. Estimations performed without accounting for this variation fail to adequately explain ex-vessel price variation. Another variable found to be a key factor in the explanation of ex-vessel prices is the wholesale price. This factor and the size variable accounted for most of the variation in ex-vessel port prices. Even though the seasonal prices between ports are similar, the intraseasonal variation in port price is partly the result of competition for the fisherman's catch of coho. When two ports are located in such a way that fishermen may easily land at either one, fishermen appear to land at the port where price is greater. Ports such as La Push and Neah Bay in Washington, and Bandon and Winchester Bay in Oregon are the ports found to be alternative ports for the fishermen catching coho in those areas. Coastal ex-vessel prices do not appear to be established as a result of equilibrium conditions at any particular port. Rather, ex-vessel price and market clearing quantities are determined in the aggregate. Each port's buyers will establish port price based on the current aggregate equilibrium condition. The aggregate coastal demand for coho at the ex-vessel level was estimated for the 1976 season and found to be highly price elastic. Given that aggregate supplies are augmentable, increases in coastal landings will increase total returns to the ex-vessel fishery. One additional finding suggests that the number of buyers in most ports does not play a significant role in the determination of intraseasonal variation of port ex-vessel prices. / Graduation date: 1979

This study focuses on the Lummi Indian fishers of Northwest Washington State, and the manner in which they have been included in and excluded from the commercial fishing industry over the past one hundred years. The approach to be taken in this situation of internal dependency is to examine access to resources. The control of productive resources — land, water, timber, minerals, and fish. — that Indians own or have access to, presents an ideal starting point for understanding Indian underdevelopment. Prior to and immediately after the time the Lummi were confined to a reservation, they were engaged in a traditional fishery that met their needs for subsistence and had the potential to develop into a viable commercial endeavor. The penetration of capital into the commercial salmon fishery of North Puget Sound initially utilized Lummi labor, but the development of new extractive technologies and an increase in the availability of labor of other ethnicities rapidly circumvented the need for Indian labor. Concomitantly, throughout the early 1900s, efforts by the State of Washington to curtail Indian fishing resulted in the Lummi being confined to a small reservation fishery of insignificant commercial potential. In the 1940s, when Lummi exclusion from the fishery was almost total, the need for fishers suddenly became acute, and the Lummi were once again incorporated into the commercial salmon fishery. Nevertheless, the post-war era again saw new developments in the salmon industry, and, no longer needed by the processors, the Lummi were once again squeezed out of the industry. Sympathetic court cases in the late 1960s and early 1970s guaranteed commercially significant fishing opportunity for the Lummi. Nevertheless, the present Lummi salmon fishery is not going to provide the Lummi with a viable economic base. The manner in which the fishery has developed is causing the majority of the economic yield of the fishery to be siphoned off to non-Lummi interests. Utilizing ethnohistorical and ethnographic data, this study examines a dependency approach to understanding Lummi underdevelopment. By focusing primarily on economic and political dependency on the United States Federal Government, this study shows how the Lummi community was incorporated into the dominant society and became a dependent community suffering from chronic underdevelopment, despite access to and utilization of a valuable natural resource. / Arts, Faculty of / Anthropology, Department of / Graduate

This study explores the politics of regulating the British Columbia and Washington commercial salmon fisheries between 1937 and 1984. The principal focus of this comparative-historical study is upon one particularly striking exception to the tendency of regulators to tighten commercial salmon fishing restrictions over time - the persistence of liberal offshore trolling regulations. The dissertation argues that the anomalous treatment of the offshore troll fishery during this period may be ascribed to the competition between states for the right to harvest salmon - a common property resource. In making this claim, the study questions the adequacy of the interest-group driven explanations of policy which figure prominently in the literature on regulation. Two pillars of interest group theory, the tendencies to explain national policy only through reference to domestic politics and to reduce state behaviour to little more than the product of the demands of private sector interests, are challenged in this comparative case study. The challenge to the first tendency of interest group theory is sustained by examining the relations between national regulatory preferences and the foreign fishery policy goals of Canada and the United States. The pursuit of two goals - Asian exclusion and North American equity - in bilateral and multilateral negotiations demanded the adoption of particular regulatory profiles. Liberal offshore troll regulations may be explained according to the legitimacy and bargaining advantages they lent to Canadian and American efforts to incorporate these two goals into modifications to the traditional fishery regime. The study also suggests that, in a setting characterized by intergovernmental competition, regulatory policies may not always be equated with the preferences of interested private parties. In this setting the state's ability or willingness to respond to even the most influential private sector interests may be limited by the state's evaluation of its bargaining resources and requirements. State competition created a context where government attitudes towards offshore salmon fishing could be understood in terms of state preferences, preferences derived from officials' perceptions of the legitimacy of various national regulatory policies in the context of valued international institutions. While state competition is the centrepiece of the explanation of national fishery policy developed in this study its explanatory power is mediated by two intervening institutional variables - the capacities of states to formulate and implement policies and the structure of the international regime itself. The level of knowledge regarding the salmon resource played an instrumental role in the formulation of regime goals and of pertinent national policies. The extent to which state management in offshore waters was fragmented between different bureaus affected the ability of officials to adopt national policies which suited their international purposes. The redistribution of the American state's fishery management capacity in the 1970s was a catalyst for the severe restrictions visited upon Washington trailers at that time. A second institutional factor, the structure of the international fishery regime, also mediated the competition between states. The series of reciprocal fishing privileges agreements between Canada and the United States was particularly important in maintaining established offshore regulatory preferences during the 1970s when the clash between American and Canadian salmon fishery perspectives was intensifying. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate