How are Recreational and
Commercial Harvest Data Collected?

By: Gina Hunt

Protecting natural resources means more than throwing back the small fish. Collecting harvest data for both commercial and recreational fisheries in the waters of Maryland is key to maintaining the state’s abundant fish stocks and protecting the livelihood and fishing opportunities of thousands of residents.

As a partner of the Atlantic Coastal Cooperative Statistics Program (ACCSP), the Maryland DNR Fisheries Service is collecting and managing data on the harvest of marine resources, and fostering sustainable coastal fisheries. Consequently, resource managers must have information about catch, effort, and harvesters, including recreational anglers. Specifically, managers need to know:

• Numbers and weights of fish harvested,

• Numbers of people participating in the various fisheries,

• Total number of trips taken, and

• Social and economic information about participants.

Those data are used in constructing models for stock assessment, and are the basis for regulations designed to protect coastal resources. However, coastal fish do not recognize jurisdictional or State boundaries. For this reason,  a coordinated effort among States is needed to monitor and manage marine species.  State and federal natural resource managers, along with the fishing industry, have long recognized the need for accurate, timely harvest data. In the past, data were collected for specific needs, but not cooperatively shared or managed. To address the problems of incompatible and inadequate data collection and data management, the ACCSP was created.

The ACCSP is a cooperative state-federal program to design, implement, and conduct marine fisheries statistics data collection programs and to integrate those data into a single data management system that will meet the needs of fishery managers, scientists, and fishermen. It is composed of representatives from natural resource management agencies coastwide, including the Maryland DNR, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NOAA Fisheries). Using the ACCSP’s standards, Maryland’s fisheries data will be consistent with that of the other Atlantic coastal states.

Commercial Data Collection

Fishermen that harvest in Maryland’s waters must be licensed by DNR and may be permitted by DNR or NOAA Fisheries, depending on the species harvested or areas fished. DNR is responsible for collecting quality data for the resulting harvest in State waters. NOAA Fisheries collects harvest data that meets the ACCSP’s reporting standards for harvest in federal waters (outside 3 miles). 

DNR operates four data collection systems for commercial catch and effort in Maryland.  They are the finfish reporting system, blue crab reporting system, shellfish buy ticket system and seafood dealer reporting system.  DNR mails out reporting forms for each system to respective persons involved.

The finfish reporting system is based on reports of fishermen licensed to harvest finfish in Maryland. Fishermen must report catch by species, by gear, and by water area (NOAA codes) and are required to report several measures of effort, including: 1) number of days gear is used each month 2) average number of hours a gear is in the water per day when fishing 3) average amount of gear used per day and 4) average number of persons fishing on a boat per day. 

Two reporting forms are used to collect data for blue crab data: a daily record form and a monthly record form. Watermen who harvested fewer than 800 bushels of hard and soft crabs over the last two consecutive years get a monthly record form. They are required to mail back their completed forms at the end of the crabbing season. All the other crabbers receive a logbook and record their activity (catch and effort) daily. They are required to mail back the completed forms every month.

The shellfish buy ticket system is a dealer based reporting system of commercially harvested oysters, soft clams, and hard clams from Maryland waters.  For each purchase of these shellfish, the dealer or buyer is required to fill out and submit a ticket or report with seller information, amount purchased, purchase price, and effort information on the catch.  The shellfish dealers submit the tickets weekly along with a summary cover sheet and a payment for the taxes due.

The seafood dealer reporting system is based on monthly reports of licensed commercial buyers of crabs, finfish and shellfish (other than oysters and clams). Each dealer is asked to report total monthly purchases and average price by species and by market category on a form provided by DNR. The functions of this system are to estimate monthly ex-vessel value of harvest, provide a check on the total amount of catch reported by harvesters and an estimate of the proportion of the catch passing through dealers.1

Maryland DNR is phasing in the ACCSP’s trip-level reporting standards. When mandatory trip-level reporting is expanded to include all species commercially harvested, Maryland will meet the ACCSP’s standards for commercial harvest data collection, and contribute to a complete coastwide fisheries data set. The Maryland DNR took the lead in data management in 2001, being the first of the ACCSP’s partners to provide a monthly electronic feed of its commercial blue crab, oyster, and clam landings data to the ACCSP data management system.

To further aid partners in data collection and data management, the ACCSP has developed the Standard Atlantic Fisheries Information System (SAFIS). This is a web-based reporting system designed for fast, inexpensive, and easy reporting. The ACCSP’s data management staff developed the system when the state of Rhode Island decided to have their seafood dealers report online in May of 2002. Maryland DNR is now working with the ACCSP staff to modify SAFIS for their own reporting needs.

Vessels For-hire Data Collection

The fishing guide reporting system is a mandatory reporting system for vessels for-hire (charters and head boats). For-hire captains in Maryland waters, including the Maryland portion of the Chesapeake Bay, ocean side bays, and Maryland jurisdictional waters of the Atlantic Ocean, are required to record their fishing activities on a daily basis. Data reported to DNR include the number of passengers, number of fishing trips each day, and number and weight of fish harvested by species.

Beginning in the spring of 2003, the ACCSP partners will implement a new coastwide data collection system for the for-hire industry. Intercept samplers will continue visiting docks to collect catch data, but captains will also be sampled randomly to obtain fishing effort data. The logbook program and sampling will co-exist for benchmarking purposes. DNR may eliminate the for-hire logbook if it finds the survey methodology meets its needs.

Recreational Data Collection

Maryland’s recreational catch and effort data, including privately owned boats and shore fishing, are collected through the Marine Recreational Fisheries Statistics Survey (MRFSS) and are fed electronically to the ACCSP database. The purpose of the MRFSS is to establish a reliable data base for estimating the impact of marine recreational fishing the resource. Since every angler cannot be interviewed, nor every fish counted, MRFSS provides estimates of harvest, not precise accounting of fish removed from the system. 

MRFSS data are collected by two independent, but complementary, surveys. Effort data are collected through random telephone sampling in coastal counties. Catch data are collected through intercept interviews with anglers at fishing access sites. Data from the two independent surveys are combined to produce estimates of fishing effort, catch, and participation. The total number of fish caught in a particular time period and fishing area is estimated from the estimated number of fishing trips, and mean number of fish caught per trip.

MRFSS estimates are best for species that are commonly harvested by recreational anglers. When there are few samples of a species the margin of error goes up. MRFSS estimates have shown that for some species recreational harvest is larger than commercial harvest, confirming that recreational fishing can significantly impact the resource.

Some avid anglers have expressed concern that they have never been interviewed. Because there are so many anglers and so much coastline, and the cost of an angler census would exceed the entire NOAA Fisheries budget, a sampling approach is the only option for collecting these data. Like most survey research, such as political polls, the MRFSS relies on random sampling. If a survey is truly random, there is no guarantee you will ever be interviewed. As a matter of fact, it is expected that some anglers will be interviewed two or more times a year and other anglers will never be interviewed.

MRFSS provides a regional brochure that answers some “Frequently Asked Questions.” To view the Mid-Atlantic regional MRFSS brochure click here (File size=922kb about 2 ½ min @ 56kbs). You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your PC to view the brochures. If you need Acrobat Reader, it is available free to download from Adobe.