The National Saltwater Recreational Fisheries Policy Implementation Plan was Just Rel
 

The National Saltwater Recreational Fisheries Policy Implementation Plan is available online at: http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/sfa/managem...2015-2018.html



The implementation plan provides details on activities we'll be focusing on over the next 4 years to support our Agency's new recreational fishing policy and deliver quality science, service, and stewardship to the recreational community.



The National recreational Fishing Policy is available at http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/sfa/managem...icy/index.html.



A few things you may find interesting include:

Commissioning an independent National Research Council review of the Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP) to assess our progress and ensure we're following a process that is scientifically sound, statistically robust, collaborative, and transparent.
Expanding our capacity to engage the recreational community, including adding new full-time regional recreational fisheries coordinators.
Working with partners to advance electronic trip reporting for charter boats and head boats in the Gulf of Mexico and along the Atlantic coast.
Developing models to assess management decision impacts on angler participation.

We hope you will see elements that are important to you and reflect your interests. Please take a look and let us know what you think. We would welcome opportunities to work together. Send any thoughts or suggestions to Russ Dunn at russell.dunn@noaa.gov or contact your regional NOAA coordinator.

I think its a good idea to know what charter and head boats are taking. We have no idea what the take really is. I figure limits for most charter boats but head boats i really don't know. Past experience has led me to think about catching limits on charter boats.

NMFS does know what charter boats are catching. IN addition to the VTRs they are required to submit, there is also a survey of all federally licensed charter boats.

IMHO the weak point in the data NMFS uses to manage fisheries is the MRIP data, and that whole program is going to be reviewed by the National Research Council. That's the same group that found the old MRFSS data to be worthless.

They know exactly what the charter boat take is, like MakoMike said thru Required vessel trip reports and surveys.
The real unknown take here is from the recs

In theory the MRIP data should be getting better now that there is a database of names that purchase fishing licenses. Perhaps it should be mandatory for recs to fill out a yearly log to even renew their license the following season.

We have seen some incredible numbers out of MRIP, for example according to them the MA private boaters caught more BSB in a single month than the entire east coast party/charter fleet caught all season. :splat:

I doubt a yearly log would do much good, most guys can't remember what they caught past week. :laughs:

Not the purpose of the license. That would just keep more from even bothering. Most anglers just want to fish not do poletics. The number of licenses sold is used to divy up federal funding by state with an actual head count.The fee's paid are suposed to fund the system not make it bigger.

I had no idea that charter boats had to report their catches. Good to know.

agree that the rec take is a huge unknown...disagree that they know exactly what the charter take is...

from Charlie Witek....".After all, NMFS requires all bluefin tuna caught by anglers to be reported, too, but when I spoke with one of the NMFS staffers responsible for managing bluefin at NMFS' Recreational Fishing Summit held down in Alexandria last April, he lamented that anglers actually reported only about one out of every five bluefin caught.

If Alabama snapper anglers are no more conscientious than their bluefin-catching counterparts elsewhere on the coast, it’s not surprising that the state survey figures come in a little bit low…

But recreational underreporting isn’t just a tuna or red snapper problem.

Here in New York, and throughout the northeast, party and charter boats are supposed to fill out Vessel Trip Reports setting forth all of their landings. New York may have the strictest requirements, using a VTR that is essentially identical to the federal form.

Yet when we look at striped bass, we seem to find problems.

NMFS estimates that anglers fishing from for-hire boats in the State of New York landed 234,650 striped bass in 2014. At the same time, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation reports that Vessel Trip Reports filled out by the state’s party and charter boats say that just 12,309 striped bass—a mere five percent of the landings estimated by NMFS—were landed by their customers in that year.

Comparable numbers for last year were similar; NMFS said that the for-hires landed 125,558 fish, while the for-hires themselves claimed just 6,477—again, just 5% of the NMFS number.

It’s impossible to say for certain which number is right, or even which is closer to the truth. But just think about this:

Last July, Montauk experienced a spectacular run of big striped bass. During that run, passengers on Montauk party and charter boats had no problem limiting out with bass weighing from 20 to more than 50 pounds.

If just three party boats, carrying only 30 passengers each and making just one trip each day, limited out for a week, they would have landed 1,260 stripers—landing, in just one week, nearly one-fifth of all striped bass reported on all vessel trip reports filed by all of the state’s party and charter boats for the entire year.

Given that the run lasted for much more than one week, and that the 1,260-bass estimate was for only three party boats, didn’t include any fish caught by Montauk’s large and active charter boat fleet, and didn’t include striped bass caught by for-hire vessels running out of any other New York port at any other time of the year—including South Shore ports which, from Staten Island to Shinnecock, also enjoyed an excellent spring run of big bass feeding on menhaden—the notion that New York’s for-hires killed fewer than 6,500 striped bass all season just doesn’t seem credible.

That’s why VTR data, and any other self-reported information, should always be viewed with a jaundiced eye.
.."

I've read Charlie's take on it before and I certainly can't explain it. But OTOH the NMFS estimates of striped bass catches must have come from the charter/party survey, which is also self-reported! There is no incentive for anyone to lie on their VTRs, so I would guess that some guys just fail to file the required VTRs. No matter how you cut it, almost all data on recreational catches is self reported, all of the MRIP data is based on the number of self reported fishing trips. When the guy from Quantec calls me for the party/charter survey, I am self reporting what was caught on my boat.

When it comes to recreational catch data there really is no other choice but self reporting, since there is no other way to verify the amount of dead fish landed, unlike the commercial side where you have dealer reports to verify the VTR data.

The next meeting of the NEFMC RAP is supposed to get a presentation on MRIP and I for one will be paying close attention.

Not sure about other states but in Rhode Island one of the stated benefits of the Salt Water License was to improve MRIP data by providing a pool of license holder names for intercepts and data collections: "Improving the quality and accuracy of marine recreational fishing data;" To date, the effort data has been collected by random telephone surveys to households in coastal communities. However, successful interview rates have been
dropping over the past four years, despite large increases in sample size. This trend is a main driving force behind the planned switch to an alternative mail-based methodology.
MRIP has completed pilot research projects in several states evaluating the mail-based survey methodology. Preliminary results show that the response rates are higher and survey answers are more comprehensive using this methodology. The program is
expected to fully transition soon.

IIRC that was the sole reason congress enacted the salt water license.