MLMA Master Plan Appendix H. Essential Fishery Information and Data Collection Strategies

Age and growth studies typically measure how long a species lives, the age at which it reproduces, and how fast individuals grow. This information is very important to determine a population’s ability to replenish itself, the rate at which it might be harvested, and the age at which individuals will reach a harvestable size. Changes in the age structure and growth rate of a population also serve as indicators of that population’s health. Fish age often cannot be determined externally, so individuals must be harvested for age information.

A stock is a population unit that is selected for management purposes. It may be defined based on its ecology, genetics, harvesting location, and/or geographic separation. Discrete stocks of a given species may have very different growth rates, reproductive schedules and capacity, and even ecological relationships. Stock distribution refers to where a stock is found and is important in addressing jurisdictional issues.

By its very nature and size, the ocean prevents highly accurate animal population counts. Managers and scientists rely instead on estimates and indices of abundance. An index of abundance is an indirect measure of the size of a population and is often obtained by counting a portion of the population using the same methodology each year, or by comparing counts between areas using similar techniques. This information is used by managers to calculate estimates of the total population size and determine appropriate harvest levels.

Information on distribution patterns and the movement of fish can provide resource managers with important insights about a stock’s vulnerability to harvest. Certain species may aggregate in specific areas for spawning, travel in predictable patterns, or move to certain locations that make them especially vulnerable. Insights into the movement patterns of fish are vital to the development of management strategies based on regional catch quotas or MPAs.

Recruitment refers to a measure of the number of fish that survive to a particular life stage and is often used to predict future population size. Some examples include: the number of offspring that reach the juvenile stage (i.e., larval recruitment), the number of individuals that survive (recruit) to the next year (e.g., age two recruits), the number of fish that reach sexual maturity (i.e., recruit to the spawning population), or in the case of a fishery, the number of fish that recruit to the catchable component of the population. Young-of-the-year (i.e., individuals less than one year old) are frequently counted for many fish species and used as an index of larval recruitment success.

Many highly-valued species depend on successful recruitment events for replenishment. Recruitment success can be highly variable because it depends on the proper combination of many factors. As a result, the sustainable harvest of the fishery may depend on only a few strong cohorts (i.e., born the same year) to provide harvestable stocks until the next successful recruitment event. Resource managers must consider this variable recruitment success when setting harvest levels by allowing sufficient portions of stocks to escape harvest and provide spawning biomass for future recruitment successes.

Reproduction encompasses information such as the number of eggs a female produces, the average age an individual becomes sexually mature, and whether a female bears live young or broadcasts eggs into the water. This type of information helps managers determine the ability of a population to replenish itself, and at what level it might be harvested. This knowledge allows them to set appropriate open seasons, areas, size limits, escape mechanisms for traps, and net mesh-size restrictions based on spawning considerations.

Natural and fishing mortality rates comprise the sum of all individuals removed from a population over a fixed period of time, often over one year. Fishing mortality is the rate at which animals are removed from the population by fishing and can be calculated from landings information if the population size can be estimated. Natural mortality refers to all other forms of removal of fish from the population, such as predation, old age, or disease. This information is used to predict how many animals remain to reproduce and replenish the population. Mortality figures are used by managers to calculate the number or weight (i.e., biomass) which may be safely harvested from a population or stock on a sustainable basis.

Habitat investigations are useful to fisheries managers because they can identify the importance of specific physical parameters to the species of interest and associated biological assemblages. Demographic information typically consists of data relating to a population and groups that comprise it. Examples of demographic data include age, gender, ethnicity, race, education level, income level, residence location and type, and household size. In a fisheries context, the population includes fishery participants (i.e., commercial, recreational and subsistence fishermen, and fish buyers), those who provide goods and services in support of their activities, other members of the communities where they are based or operate, and consumers of seafood. Demographic data and analyses may be used to: characterize individuals, communities and other aggregates of people, including sociocultural groups, fisheries, and associated communities; identify historic variability and change in populations and groups; and measure change or impacts resulting from management action or other factors. Demographic changes, in turn, can signal changes in motivations, values, and practices.

Practices are the ways people do things and include where, when, and how they participate in fisheries and fishery-related activities. More specifically, practices include how vessels, equipment, and gear are configured and used, whether and how certain species are targeted, caught, and handled, and how the catch is distributed. Practices also include patterns of use in time and space of fishery resources, marine areas, coastal harbors, and infrastructure. These necessarily include analyses of characteristics such as: vessel length, hull material, fish holding capacity, engine type and horsepower; type of navigation, fish-finding, and gear-handling equipment; gear types, configurations, and number of units; and number of crew and their roles. The characteristics of the shore side operations may vary in many ways, including whether operations for receiving fish are mobile or fixed, the size and function of these operations, and the handling, processing, and distribution operations. Understanding fishery-related practices is key to identifying sources and solutions for ecological and socioeconomic concerns.

Motivations are the reasons why people do the things they do. Although it is often assumed that individual behavior is fully rational and driven by reason, with economic motivations, growing evidence indicates that individuals are motivated by a complex mix of social, cultural, and economic values. An understanding of fishery participants’ motivations for fishing and related activities can be used to develop management options that create appropriate and effective incentives for compliance, and to evaluate those options in terms of their acceptability, compliance, and socioeconomic outcomes.

Institutions are the formal (e.g., regulations) or informal (e.g., shared understandings of where and how gear is set, the distance between operations) norms, rules, and strategies that govern peoples’ behavior. Formal institutions include those specific to a given fishery, and those that pertain to other state- and federally-managed fisheries, broader marine space use, coastal land use, environmental protection, food production, public heath, and other relevant topics. Understanding the formal and informal institutions that affect fishery participants and associated communities is useful for evaluating the potential efficacy and outcomes of fishery management actions, and for guarding against unintended consequences (e.g., effort shifts from one species to another, or to potentially sensitive or vulnerable areas).

Relationships include the social and economic connections among people that are ongoing and meaningful to those people. In fisheries, such relationships include those among fishermen, buyers, and providers of supporting goods and services, within and among fishing families and communities, and between fishery participants and fisheries managers. Relationships can also be among organizations and communities, through which information and social and economic resources flow. They reflect interdependencies among those connected for a range of tangibles (e.g., income, goods, services, practical support) and intangibles (e.g., information, shared identity, sense of belonging). Information about these relationships is useful for understanding how the fisheries-human system functions, and for assessing social and economic impacts of change.

Fisheries-relevant capital includes the natural, human, physical, and financial resources needed and used by fishery participants and communities to sustain their activities and generate associated benefits (e.g., livelihood, recreation, sustenance). Natural capital consists of the ecological system, including living resources and habitat. Human capital includes people, and the skills and knowledge they possess individually and collectively. Physical capital includes vessels, equipment, gear, ports and other landing sites and facilities, and seafood processing facilities. Financial capital includes the monetary resources used to purchase or provide physical capital and goods and services to enable human activities. Understanding the types of capital needed, available, and used by fishery participants, fisheries, and communities is useful for better understanding fisher-related behavior, social and economic impacts, and opportunities and challenges to effective adaptation to environmental and regulatory change.

Employment relevant to fisheries and their management includes part- and full- time, seasonal, and year-round jobs in fishing and seafood production and those jobs associated with the provision of supporting infrastructure and goods and services, including related research and management activities. Changes in fishing opportunities and activities can have direct, indirect, and induced effects on employment among fishery participants, goods and service providers, and others in the associated communities and economies. Jobs gained or lost in one part of the human system affect those in other parts of the system. Employment information is useful for evaluating the impacts of management change on fishery participants, communities, and economies.

Revenues consist of payments received by fishery participants and businesses for fish landed, handled, processed, and sold. Revenue also includes payments received for fishery-related goods and services, ranging from charter fishing trips to vessel, gear, equipment, gear sales, boat rentals, fuel, bait, and ice. Revenues may originate and circulate primarily within a community, although they typically come from and/or circulate outside a given community. Information about fishery-related revenues is useful for assessing the impacts of changing resource availability and management on fishery participants, fisheries, fishing communities, and the overall economy. Moreover, changes in revenues, such as the ex-vessel price for commercially-caught species can signal a change in fishing practices.

The Department’s first major attempt to gather EFI began in 1916 with the use of landing receipts, or “fish tickets,” as they are commonly known. Commercial buyers are required to complete landing receipts when the catch is off-loaded onshore to track the amount of fish landed by weight or number, along with the fee due on those landings. These forms contain information on the species, general location fished, weight of the catch, and price paid for the catch. Many fish species are often grouped into multispecies market categories based on similar market value rather than separated into species-specific categories. This can present a problem when attempting to use this information in analyses. Although limited in scope and accuracy, information on landing receipts are often the only information available for a particular fishery.

Logbooks were developed to augment information obtained from landing receipts and require that fishermen record information such as catch, location fished, and time spent fishing for each time their fishing gear is deployed. The log is then sent to the Department. Logbooks seek to access the professional knowledge and observations of fishermen to improve fishery management. The utility of the information that they provide is dependent on its accuracy, timeliness, and return rate. Logbooks have the potential to be a very valuable source of fishery-dependent information, especially considering the relatively low cost to administer the program statewide. The Department is in the process of shifting from paper to electronic logbooks, and this transition provides an opportunity to revise the data that is collected, as well as overcome the lags associated with return and data entry that have been obstacles to the use of the data in the past. A 2017 review in support of the Department’s transition to electronic logbooks suggested that logbooks be redesigned to collect the information in Table H5 to increase their utility.

Creel surveys entail interviews of sport fishermen at boat-launching ramps or at points where they are fishing from land (e.g., beaches, piers, and rocky coastline). Samplers typically gather information on the number of each species caught, number of each species kept, size and sex of kept fish, number of fish returned to the water, type of gear used, number of fishermen in the party, and total hours fished. Certain creel surveys may also collect socioeconomic data such as distance traveled from home or port, length of stay in the area, and expenditures. The accuracy and precision of these surveys depend largely on a good working relationship between Department staff and the fishermen being surveyed. Information collected on catch composition, CPUE, size limits, and fishing mortality are used to determine how the recreational sector of a fishery affects a resource.

Dockside or fish market sampling is used to collect commercial landings data after the catch has been off-loaded and, in the case of multiple-species landings, separated into market categories. These data provide important information on total weight, species composition, size, sex, age, and maturity of the species being landed. It is important to note, however, that this type of sampling provides imprecise estimates of fishing effort, and little to no information on bycatch or discards. Fishery landing statistics collected from this sampling allow fishing mortality rates to be calculated (excluding any discard mortality).

Scientific observers accompany commercial and sport fishermen on fishing trips to collect biological and socioeconomic data at sea. Observers collect information on the location fished, total catches (not just landed), and the species, size, sex, and maturity of fish caught. In some fisheries they also collect (or have collected in the past) data on bycatch, discards, and interactions with birds and marine mammals. This information also can be used to verify logbook and creel survey data. On-board sampling also has the potential to address socioeconomic gaps in EFI. On-board observers collect EFI that cannot be obtained by other means (e.g., bycatch, precise fishing locations of each unit of fishing effort).

Rather than rely on a commercial or recreational fishery to provide the Department with samples, biologists often collect their own samples using a variety of gear. Since fisheries often use gear that selects certain sizes or a sex of fish or invertebrates, catches usually do not represent the entire population. By using gear that catches a representative sample of the entire population (e.g., trawls for some fisheries) the Department avoids such limitations of fishery-dependent samples.

Tagging animals provides EFI such as their movement, age, growth, and population size. Fish or invertebrates are captured alive, the size and catch location are recorded, and they animals are tagged externally (typically), and released. If they are recaptured at a later date, information can be obtained on their age, growth, and distance traveled since being released. Tagging studies are most frequently conducted with the advice and participation of fishermen, who are most likely to recapture tagged animals and return the tag and/or animal to the Department. Information on distribution patterns and movement of fish is valuable to resource managers because it allows insight into the areas and times that stocks are most vulnerable to harvest or environmental effects.

Surveys to estimate the abundance of eggs spawned by a particular species of fish or invertebrate are also used to estimate the size of a population, especially the reproductive portion of a population. This method also provides information on the amount and locations of reproduction, and spawning habitat preferences.

The ability to deploy divers or equipment underwater to make direct observations of animals and habitats is important. This method allows a variety of EFI to be collected that cannot be collected using other methods, including information on detailed habitat preferences, ecological interactions, movement patterns, and non-lethal size/abundance information. Scuba-based projects are equipment-intensive and require a relatively large staff or partnership to ensure the requisite sampling effort.

Submarines and remotely operated vehicles are also capable of direct, in situ observation of the environment and living resources. Unlike divers however, their operation is not as severely constrained by depth, ocean conditions, or operating time. In addition, these units can carry a wide array of sensory equipment.

Hydroacoustic technology is familiar to most fishermen because it is the same technology used by depth finders and sonar to locate schooling fish or the ocean bottom. This method can be used to measure the size, distribution, and movement of fish schools, and to map and characterize the associated bottom or habitat type. It is most useful for species that exhibit schooling behavior.

Recently, scientists have refined genetic assessment techniques to sample populations to differentiate discrete fish or invertebrate stocks. Separate stocks of a given species may have very different life histories and this type of EFI may be used by resource managers in regional management strategies.