ATTITUDES ABOUT RECREATION, ENVIRONMENTAL-PROBLEMS, AND ESTUARINE HEALTH ALONG THE NEW-JERSEY SHORE, USA

Management of ecosystems has advanced by an improvement in our underst anding not only of how ecosystems function, but of how people perceive their functioning and what they consider to be environmental problems within those systems. Central to such management is understanding how people view estuaries. In this article I explore the perceptions and attitudes of people about coastal recreation, environmental problems, and future land use along the New Jersey shore (USA) by interviewing p eople who attended a duck decoy and craft show on Barnegat Bay. The pe ople who were interviewed engaged in more days of fish-ing than any ot her recreational activity and engaged in camping the least. There were significant differences in recreational rates as a function of gender and location of residence, with men hunting and fishing more than wom en and photographing less than women. Jet skis were perceived as the m ost severe environmental problem, with chemical pollution, junk, oil r unoff and overfishing as second level problems. Birds were perceived a s not an environmental problem at all. Fishing, hiking, preservation, and camping ranked as the highest preferred future land uses for the t wo sites examined (Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station, Naval Weap ons Station Earle). The preferred future land uses for these two sites , which are not under consideration for land-use changes, were very si milar to those of people living near the Department of Energy's Savann ah River Site in South Carolina, despite the media attention and consi derations of nuclear storage.