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 About a
year and a half ago, the National Research Council released a report on
the Marine Recreational Fishing Statistics Survey (MRFSS) that was very
critical. It said what we many of us participating in fisheries management
already knew: there are severe problems with MRFSS. The Council proposed
changes to make data collection better and set in motion an effort to
improve the recreational data collection system that is at full steam
today.
This new effort is of critical importance to
anglers – the data from this new survey will be used to manage us for the
foreseeable future. It is important we get involved and help make this the
best data collection system possible.
Recreational data collection is so important
that even Congress got involved, requiring that a new data collection
system be created and a national registry for anglers be implemented by
July 1, 2009. The federal government can start charging a fee for the
license on July 1, 2011.
In addition, the newly reauthorized
Magnuson-Stevens Act (MSA) requires anglers to be managed using annual
catch limits (ACL) with accountability measures (AM), both of which will
directly compare recreational catch with commercial catch. This means we
will have to have a better, more accurate data collection system than ever
before.
A BRIEF HISTORY
The original MRFSS program was designed in
the late 1970s to collect recreational effort and catch data on a
coastwide basis. Since there are millions of fishermen, it was designed as
a survey – meaning you contact a small percentage of anglers and
extrapolate the data for the entire angling population. It is similar to
the polls you see conducted during elections.
The survey was fine for what it was designed
to do – collect coastwide data. However, the demands of modern fishery
management caused the information to be used in very different ways – to
the extent we now set quotas on a state-by-state basis for some species.
The original survey was never designed to be used that way.
Information gathered by the survey itself
was done in two ways. One way was by “Intercept” where you may have been
asked by an agent to see your catch at the boat ramp or pier or some other
location. This data gives you an idea of catch per trip. The second method
was by “Coastal Household Telephone Survey” where coastal
households are randomly called to discover people who have fished in
saltwater during the previous two months. This information gives us the
number of trips.
Taken together, the survey was able to take
the number of trips gathered in the telephone survey times the catch
information gathered by the intercept survey and come up with recreational
catch.
Of course, a registry of all anglers would
make this process much more efficient, as there would be a “universe” of
anglers to sample from rather than an exploration process to find them and
then sample them.
ACCURATE?
That is the $64 million question, as it is
with all surveys simply because we don’t know the true answer. To even
form an idea of how accurate it is, we have to first define a couple of
terms that are often confused.
Precision - Precision is best
explained with an analogy to target shooting. If you shoot five bullets at
a target and they all hit within an inch of each other, that is precision
shooting because they are tightly grouped.
Bias - Now take the same bullet
grouping and move it 10 inches to the right of the bullseye and 8 inches
low. Your shooting, while still very precise, is biased because the
grouping consistently misses the bullseye. This may be caused by a bad
rifle barrel, sights that are off, or just poor shooting technique.
Accuracy – Accuracy is a combination of
precision and bias. An accurate estimation is precise and has very little
bias. In other words, your tight group of shots was in the middle of the
bullseye.
Precision is really a measure of how well a
survey was conducted. A survey with precise results can most likely be
repeated with similar results. A survey with very low precision is more
likely to yield different results if repeated.
Bias, and thus accuracy, however, is much
more difficult to measure. Particularly when sampling a large, diverse
population like recreational fishermen. If the population of all anglers
in all locations at all times is randomly sampled, then the resulting
estimate will be unbiased, similar to a good political poll. However, if a
portion of the angler population is not sampled (anglers fishing on
private property, for example), then the estimate of catch will be biased
and thus less accurate.
Unfortunately, it is usually not possible to
measure bias unless you know the true value of the entire population; in
this case the true value of the recreational catch.
Accuracy is especially important if managers
are going to directly compare the recreational harvest with the commercial
harvest via a total allowable catch (TAC) or an allocation. If we were
managing just a recreational fishery, then a survey conducted with
precision would be more than adequate – the resulting estimates would most
likely be comparable to each other over time or area. It is comparing a
counted, not estimated, commercial harvest with an estimated recreational
harvest that has caused problems in the past. That’s really one of the
main reasons we are going through all this trouble to improve recreational
data collection. In addition to the basic fact that better data means
better decisions, managers are now required by law to set annual catch
limits for both sectors.
What
is The New Program?
The project underway is called the Marine
Recreational Information Program (MRIP – already dubbed “MRFSS Rest In
Peace” by some), and it has attracted some of the best and brightest minds
to correct the problems experienced with the previous system.
It will still be a survey, as there are too
many recreational fishers to be able to count everyone’s catch. However,
many of the problems with the previous survey are being addressed.
A Executive Steering Committee, composed of
professionals both inside and outside of government, was created to
oversee the creation of the new data collection system. They, in turn,
created an Operations Team to oversee the nuts and bolts of the actual
data collection system and a Registry Team to oversee the creation of a
registry. The Operations Team took all the recommendations made by the NRC
to fix the data collection system and assembled them into five different,
broad areas.
The Operations Team then created five
workgroups to do the actual projects to improve recreational data
collection. These workgroups (Data, Analysis, Design, Highly Migratory
Species, For-Hire) are composed of private, state and federal managers and
statisticians as well as regular old, everyday anglers.
The anglers are providing both expertise
from their fishing experience and acting as the conduit back to the
angling community about the new system. Their role is critical to the
acceptance of the new system by anglers.
The process to fix the data collection
problems kicked into gear last September with a meeting of statisticians
and managers in Denver. That led to a kickoff meeting last August in
Florida where the teams and workgroups came together for the first time.
They worked for two days developing the pilot projects that will be used
to develop the new recreational data collection system.
What About The Registry?
One of the key recommendations made by the
NRC was to develop a registry of anglers that would provide a sampling
framework. Right now, managers have to make a bunch of phone calls to find
a few anglers to survey. With a registry, almost every one called would be
an angler, making the sampling effort much more efficient.
The relevant language in the Magnuson
Stevens Act says: "(1) FEDERAL PROGRAM.---The Secretary shall establish
and implement a regionally based registry program of recreational
fishermen in each of the 8 fishery management regions. The program, which
shall not require a fee before January 1, 2011, shall provide for---
(A) the registration (including identification and contact information) of
individuals who engage in recreational fishing -
(i) in the Exclusive Economic Zone;
(ii) for anadromous species; or
(iii) for Continental Shelf fishery resources beyond the Exclusive
Economic Zone;
and
(B) if appropriate, the registration (including the ownership, operator,
and identification of the vessel) of vessels used in such fishing
(2) STATE PROGRAMS.---The secretary shall exempt from registration under
the program recreational fishermen and charter fishing vessels licensed,
permitted or registered under the laws of a State if the Secretary
determines that information from the state program is suitable for the
Secretary's use or is used to assist in completing marine recreational
fisheries statistical surveys, or evaluating the effects of
proposed conservation and management measures for marine recreational
fisheries."
The key point is these are two separate
programs - the federal program is to be used only if a state does not
create a sampling frame (license) that meets the requirements of the
Secretary. The Registry Team is currently working on the criteria the
Secretary will use to make that determination, and it is separate from the
three items listed under FEDERAL PROGRAM above.
The Registry team’s goal is to have a
registry that is as complete as possible. To that end, the team believes
the registry would be better done by individual states through a license.
The team is in the middle of deciding what exemptions would be allowable
and what exemptions would not be allowable.
Anglers should see a call for public
comment by the National Marine Fisheries Service on the creation of a
registry this winter. Your CCA is deeply involved with all phases of this
effort and we believe it will be critically important to the future of
recreational fishing.
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