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A License Registry Improves Sampling Efficiency for a Marine Recreational Survey
Author(s) -
Ashford Julian R.,
Jones Cynthia M.,
Fegley Lynn
Publication year - 2009
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 - 10.1577/t08-142.1
Subject(s) - license , recreation , callinectes , phone , fishery , sampling (signal processing) , business , geography , computer science , telecommunications , ecology , detector , biology , operating system , linguistics , philosophy , crustacean
Marine recreational surveys that use lists of coastal households for a sampling frame have been encouraged to improve their efficiency by using angler license registries instead. However, few studies have compared surveys of license holders and coastal households or assessed the gain in efficiency. During a survey of the recreational fishery for the blue crab Callinectes sapidus in Maryland, sport crab license holder and coastal county households were sampled by telephone. Overall, 40.5% of license holder households interviewed reported activity compared with 2.7% of coastal households interviewed. The license list showed no disadvantage in statistical properties compared with coastal households. However, the response rate was low for both lists; for the license survey, 30.5% of telephone numbers called resulted in interviews compared with 29.3% for coastal households. To improve response rates, we recommend that license registries incorporate incentives and alternative information for reaching license holders, such as cell‐phone numbers and e‐mail addresses.