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Within‐Day Variability in Catch Taken by Public Access Fishers during a Recreational Fishing Survey
Author(s) -
Ashford Julian R.,
Jones Cynthia M.,
Fegley Lynn
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
transactions of the american fisheries society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.696
H-Index - 86
eISSN - 1548-8659
pISSN - 0002-8487
DOI - 10.1080/00028487.2013.790843
Subject(s) - callinectes , recreation , fishing , fishery , environmental science , sampling (signal processing) , recreational fishing , geography , ecology , biology , crustacean , computer science , filter (signal processing) , computer vision
Access point surveys of recreational fisheries are usually stratified into weekdays and weekend days and allocate only a single sampling assignment per day sampled; this is because most variation is thought to be due to differences in angler behavior between the week and weekend and between days. However, few estimates of within‐day variability are available, and this source of error has not been adequately assessed. During a 2011 survey of the recreational fishery for blue crabs Callinectes sapidus in Maryland, we used a stratified two‐stage design with week and weekend strata, and multiple assignments were selected randomly within sampling days to measure within‐day variability. Within‐day variability accounted for 85.3–98.5% of the variation in blue crab catch between July and September, whereas 1.5–14.7% of the variation was due to between‐day variability; during the months examined, there was no significant effect due to week–weekend. These results suggest the use of a simple two‐stage design to estimate the recreational catch of blue crabs, with sampling effort allocated to capturing within‐day variability. Better management of the main sources of error can increase the precision and accuracy of catch estimates, and we recommend that recreational surveys use pilot studies to evaluate sources of variation before the study design is finalized.