Estimating Recreational Fishing Effort Using Autonomous Cameras at Boat Ramps versus Creel Surveys

Abstract

Measuring fishing effort is a common practice in fisheries management. Traditional access‐point or roving creel surveys rely on in‐person interaction between management agency personnel and anglers, the cost of which can restrict where and when the surveys can be performed. Increasing the efficiency of the techniques that are used to estimate recreational fishing effort would benefit management agencies by reducing costs or allowing for sampling at more waterbodies. We investigated using motion‐triggered game cameras installed at boat ramps to capture the number of fishing trips, number of anglers, and trip durations to be used in estimating fishing effort. We tested boat ramp cameras at five lakes in the Florida Panhandle and peninsular Florida having diversity in their fisheries and user‐group characteristics and ranging from small (<300 ha) to large (>12,000 ha). On three of the lakes, we concurrently conducted roving creel surveys, allowing us to compare the methods’ estimates of fishing effort, costs, and personnel time. The camera‐based estimates of fishing effort were similar to those from the roving creel survey but tended to exceed them, including up to a factor of 2.22 in one case. These differences in effort estimates may have been due to several things such as erroneously designating some nonfishing trips as fishing trips during photo analysis, overestimating time spent fishing by ascribing all of the time between launch and retrieval to fishing, or underestimating fishing effort via roving creel surveys, as creel clerks might have occasionally missed anglers during the angler counts. Roving creel surveys were 1.25–2.50 times as expensive as camera counts because the cameras required less personnel effort. The detection probabilities that were calculated from the camera results ranged from 0.57 to 1.00, but the value was ≥ 0.86 at four of the five lakes. Despite some challenges, boat ramp cameras provided an effective, cost‐beneficial tool for estimating fishing effort.

Seasonal, spatial, and water level predictors of angler catch and effort within Texas black bass reservoir fisheries

“…Regarding the negative bias observed for effort density during roving surveys, we also found studies with similar estimates comparing complete (access point) and incomplete (roving) trip data (Bisping and Thompson 2017; Dutterer et al. 2020). During TPWD roving creel surveys, interviews and angler counts that feed into effort estimates are only collected from anglers that are actively fishing, which, in comparison to estimates derived from completed trips, may influence the differential estimations observed when comparing roving and access point survey estimates.…”

Digital fisheries data in the Internet age: Emerging tools for research and monitoring using online data in recreational fisheries

“…pollution, habitat disturbance, damage/stress to species caused by noise or boat strikes). Nature managers must also track the social dimensions of fisheries including catch shares (Abbott et al, 2018; Miranda, 2005), perceptions of management (Quinn, 1992), effort (Dutterer et al, 2020), target and nontarget species (Brouwer et al, 1997), user satisfaction (Birdsong et al, 2021), stakeholder attitudes, perceptions, beliefs and values (Arlinghaus, 2005, Manfredo et al, 2017), and management or behavioural outcomes (i.e. harvest or release; Gaeta et al, 2013).…”

Incorporating Time‐Lapse Digital Cameras into Creel Surveys at Three Alabama Reservoirs

“…Digital cameras are becoming increasingly common in fisheries to obtain estimates of fishing effort (Smallwood et al 2002;Kristine 2012;Fitzsimmons et al 2013;Greenberg and Godin 2015;Hining and Rash 2016;Dutterer et al 2020). They provide an alternative to high-intensity onsite creel surveys (Greenberg and Godin 2015).…”

“…With motion detection, a time stamp is available to estimate total effort spent by anyone detected by the camera. A downside to this survey method is the extensive time required to analyze the data gathered from these remote cameras, but this effort may be less than typically required to conduct an intercept creel survey (Kristine 2012;Smallwood et al 2012;Dutterer et al 2020).…”

“…2013; Greenberg and Godin 2015; Hining and Rash 2016; Dutterer et al. 2020). They provide an alternative to high‐intensity on‐site creel surveys (Greenberg and Godin 2015).…”