When catch limits are set and specific species are declared closed to recreational anglers, questions about the data for the decisions are raised by those who are shut out.
Accordingly, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has announced it will undertake a large-scale Fishing Effort Survey as part of its efforts to improve and produce quality recreational angling data.
When more than 40% of boats sold are used almost exclusively for fishing, and upward of 70% are used at least some of the time for angling activities, NOAA’s efforts to gain better insight are important to boating’s continued success.
The new study is a follow-up to a pilot study conducted because of concerns about questions that may have led to overestimations of fishing effort. So a more robust study was called for to confirm findings, and it will be conducted in 2024.
The Fishing Effort Survey is part of its continuous improvement process, according to NOAA. The survey collects private recreational fishing information upon which to base estimates of catch success. The results of such studies play a pivotal role in determining the condition of a fishery and the setting of allowable catch rates to insure the continued health of the stocks.
According to NOAA, the second study is needed for the following reasons:
• While the sequence of questions in the Fishing Effort Survey is based on well-researched and standard survey practices — asking easier questions before more challenging ones — findings from the pilot study suggest that may not always be optimal.
• The Fishing Effort Survey asks respondents to report their fishing activity over two-month and a 12-month periods. In the pilot study, the question order was changed to first ask about fishing trips in the previous 12 months.
• Switching the sequence of questions resulted in fewer reporting errors and illogical responses, and effort estimates that were generally 30% to 40% lower for shore and private boat modes than estimates produced from the current design. Results varied by state and fishing mode, however.
• The pilot study was conducted over six months with a smaller sample size than a full Fishing Effort Survey. The results suggest the order of the questions in the survey may have generated overestimation of fishing effort, so a more robust study is necessary to confirm.
NOAA is planning a larger-scale follow-up study to gain a clearer understanding of the differences in effort estimates between the current design and a revised design. It’s important to note that NOAA says it doesn’t know if the same results will come out of this follow-up study. The revised design includes changing the order of questions and also increasing the administration of the survey from every two months to monthly.
The follow-up study will be conducted over the full course of 2024 with the revised design administered alongside the current design. Monthly sampling will produce more frequent estimates, which is a priority of all state and regional partners, and a shorter respondent recall period may also minimize reporting errors.
It’s important to determine through this study the combined impacts on reporting errors of more frequent sampling with changing the order of questions.
Every boat dealer knows good fishing is a cornerstone of healthy boat sales. So the management decisions made by NOAA, along with state partner agencies, must be based on the best available data. Boaters and anglers can be frustrated when a certain fishery is suddenly closed — I can attest to this — because the available data indicates the species is becoming overfished. Equally disconcerting is the possibility that the data used by regulators may have overestimated the recreational angler’s catch rate.
No one condones overfishing, so accurate data is paramount, and the boating industry calls for and supports improved reporting and analysis. NOAA and the various regional fishery management councils, fisheries commissions and states use a combination of fisheries data to make their management decisions.
