NOAA Shares Plans to Re-envision Recreational Fishing Data Collection

Nationally coherent, regionally specific. 

This is the primary goal of the current federal-state effort to re-envision the recreational fisheries data collection program. 

NOAA collects recreational fishing data from anglers through their network of surveys. These data result in estimates of recreational catch and effort. Alongside commercial, observer, and biological data, they help inform stock assessments and resulting fisheries management advice. The aim is to provide optimal fishing opportunities while balancing the need to protect marine fisheries resources. 

While the current data collection program has its strengths—including tracking long-term patterns in recreational fishing activity—we acknowledge the program’s challenges. We recognize the need to re-evaluate our approaches and strive for a new collaboratively developed vision for recreational data collection that builds on the strengths of state and regional partners. This will produce better data and better recreational catch estimates. Alongside our partners, the involvement of the recreational fishing community is crucial to the success of this process.

In the spring, NOAA held initial briefings with key partners from interstate fisheries commissions, federal fishery management councils, and states and territories. NOAA also met with a large number of partner-identified members of the broader recreational fishing community. 

They hope to work swiftly and thoroughly over the next year to conduct more in-depth interviews, forge working groups, and host a series of workshops to develop a shared vision. The ultimate goal is to transition to a reinvigorated partnership by 2026. If you’re interested in staying in the loop on this initiative, please email fisheries.mrip@noaa.gov. 

The program is built on the principle of continuous improvement. In tandem with this initiative, we are facilitating substantial projects to directly help tackle primary concerns raised by partners and anglers regarding recreational fishing data, including: 

• Conducting a large-scale study of our Fishing Effort Survey throughout 2024 to test improvements in respondent recall and resulting estimates of recreational fishing effort
• Supporting projects and workshops addressing concerns with the uncertainty surrounding numbers of discards and fishing effort in the Gulf of Mexico with Inflation Reduction Act funding
• Supporting state and regional partners in the Atlantic, West Coast, Gulf of Mexico, Alaska, and Hawaii in the development and certification of additional state data-collection programs to produce more timely and precise catch and effort estimates for key regional species