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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 36 Number 1
September 2008
New NMFS program to improve rec monitoring
The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) considers accurate information to be the most important requirement for managing the nation’s fisheries and has a major initiative underway to improve its program for monitoring recreational fishing catch and effort.
Called the Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP), it will replace the Marine Recreational Fisheries Statistics Survey (MRFSS), which has been used since 1979 to obtain estimates of recreational fishing participation, effort, and landings. The MRIP will be a reliable source of data about recreational fishing and will ensure an accurate accounting of recreational fishing in management decisions.
The number of saltwater anglers has increased dramatically in recent years and the recreational fishery has become much more significant in terms of economic contributions and its impact on fish stocks.
For some species – striped bass and tautog are examples – recreational harvest exceeds that of commercial fishing and is a major source of fishing mortality.
Harvest by recreational fishermen can affect the amount of fish that can be harvested by commercial fishermen. Recent changes to the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSA) requires that all fish be managed according to annual catch limits (ACLs) – commercial and recreational – and that any harvest above the limits be accounted for in the rules set for the following year.
The changes place unprecedented demands on fishery managers to prevent overfishing and rebuild overfished stocks. Regional fishery management councils will need to address these new requirements in their fishery management plans.
ACLs will be set by determining how many fish can be removed from the population each year without threatening the long-term health of the population.
By better estimating the number of trips that are being taken by recreational anglers, and the number of fish those trips yield, commercial and recreational catches will be considered on a level playing field.
Why it’s important
Since few species of fish are harvested only by commercial fishermen, the impacts of recreational harvest become an important factor in deciding how high catch limits are set, making it more important than ever that statistical estimates of harvest by recreational fishermen are timely and accurate.
With some species, such as bluefish and fluke, the total harvest is divided between commercial and recreational fishermen. The size of the commercial harvest and compliance with harvest limits are determined from records submitted to NMFS by commercial fishermen and dealers. In contrast, harvest size and compliance for recreational fisheries are estimates of recreational landings based on statistical sampling programs.
If the recreational harvest estimates are lower than actual catch, future harvest limits could be too high, resulting in eventual overfishing and more drastic reductions for all harvesters – recreational and commercial – being necessary to rebuild stocks.
In contrast, if harvest is estimated to be higher than it actually is, harvest limits could be set lower than necessary, depriving all harvesters of fishing opportunities.
Because total removal of fish from a population, regardless of fishing method, is the primary management consideration, commercial fishermen have a vested interest in ensuring that estimates of recreational harvest are reliable and accurate.
Data collection
To comply with the MSA, scientists and managers need reliable information about abundance of juvenile and adult fish, distribution of stocks, patterns of movement, quality of habitat, and discards and landings by commercial and recreational fishermen to develop harvest controls that prevent overfishing and rebuild overfished stocks.
Managers rely on many sources and methods of collecting that kind of data. Records of commercial landings and estimates of harvest by recreational fishermen are among the most important of these. They are used, for example, in stock assessments and determining compliance with catch limits and quota assignments.
In the Northeast, commercial fishermen and dealers have been required to submit trip reports (logbooks) and records of fish purchases to NMFS and some states for many years.
Such a direct count of landings establishes a timely, complete, and independently comparable record of commercial removals from the population. It also holds the industry, and individuals in some cases, accountable for harvest beyond limits and assigned quotas, and enables action within a fishing season to close or limit fishing to prevent exceeding annual limits.
In contrast, the recreational landings by private boat and shore-based anglers are based on statistical estimates using the MRFSS.
Collecting survey data and preparing these estimates is not as timely as actual counts and they cannot be used for in-season adjustments of harvest using existing survey methods because they take several months to put together.
Beyond catch limits on some species, management efforts have been refined even more to apply to individual states and to create complicated seasons and bag limits.
Many fishermen, both commercial and recreational, have argued that using MRFSS data for such complicated management schemes results in unnecessary restrictions and unfair treatment of both sectors.
NRC recommendations
NMFS responded to such criticism and the growing lack of confidence in the MRFSS by asking the National Research Council (NRC) to conduct an independent review of the survey and report on its findings.
The report, released in 2006, identified a number of potential problems with the sampling and estimation designs and questioned the adequacy of the existing surveys in providing the statistics needed to support accurate stock assessments and appropriate fishery management decisions.
Among the specific recommendations in the report was creating a national registry of saltwater anglers to be developed and used as the “phonebook” for future surveys.
Congress responded to the NRC recommendations soon after the report by directing the Department of Commerce to create a federal, regionally based registry program for recreational fishing and to implement an improved recreational fisheries survey program by Jan. 1, 2009.
Marine rec program
In response to the NRC report and the public’s concerns, NMFS has begun a major initiative to improve recreational data collection and analysis.
The MRIP builds on the requirement to register saltwater anglers beginning in January 2009, which is one important step in improving our monitoring of recreational fishing effort. A number of projects are underway to create uniform standards for data collection and to improve sampling for private boat anglers, for-hire fisheries, and landings of highly migratory species such as marlin and tunas.
New sampling approaches will be implemented based on the results of these projects. The current MRFSS will be phased out over the next few years and replaced with a program of regional surveys that will be based on sound survey methodology and be flexible enough to accommodate the regional differences in fisheries around the country.
The goal of the MRIP is to create a reliable source of recreational statistics and improve the information used to assess the health of the nation’s fisheries. We want to build confidence in the new program to the point that managers and fishermen no longer argue about the quality of the science used in decisions, but rather collaborate on management measures that are fair and effective.
More information about the MRIP is available on the NMFS web site at <www.st.nmfs.noaa.gov/mrip>.
Preston Pate
Gordon Colvin
Preston Pate is the former director of the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries. He retired from that post in 2006 and chairs the Operations Team for the Marine Recreational Information Program. He resides in Newport, NC.
Gordon Colvin is the former chief of the Bureau of Marine Resources for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. He retired from state service in 2007, and is now with the National Marine Fisheries Services’ Office of Science and Technology, where he heads up the national saltwater angler registry program.
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