Using posts to an online social network to assess fishing effort

Abstract

a b s t r a c tFisheries management has evolved from reservoir to watershed management, creating a need to simultaneously gather information within and across interacting reservoirs. However, costs to gather information on the fishing effort on multiple reservoirs using traditional creel methodology are often prohibitive. Angler posts about reservoirs online provide a unique medium to test hypotheses on the distribution of fishing pressure. We show that the activity on an online fishing social network is related to fishing effort and can be used to facilitate management goals. We searched the Nebraska Fish and Game Association Fishing Forum for all references from April 2009 to December 2010 to 19 reservoirs that comprise the Salt Valley regional fishery in southeastern Nebraska. The number of posts was positively related to monthly fishing effort on a regional scale, with individual reservoirs having the most annual posts also having the most annual fishing effort. Furthermore, this relationship held temporally. Online fishing social networks provide the potential to assess effort on larger spatial scales than currently feasible.

Smartphones Reveal Angler Behavior: A Case Study of a Popular Mobile Fishing Application in Alberta, Canada

“…App data are also likely to complement, and in some cases provide a viable alternative to, conventional lake and angler surveys. For example, our analyses show that app data predict survey-based estimates of angler effort in most regions of Alberta as well as creel-based estimates of angler visits to specific Alberta lakes (see also Martin et al 2014). The latter relationship was less strong, perhaps because creel data preceded app data by up to 19 years.…”

“…In addition, where other tools require a project to be launched, along with the need to train and motivate volunteers, apps can collect data passively. For example, a recent study found that passive data from a similar medium (an online angler forum) predicted spatial and temporal patterns of fishing effort in Nebraska reservoirs (Martin et al 2014). Therefore, fishing apps represent an underutilized tool for efficiently collecting information on angler behavior and other data relevant to fisheries management and invasive species control.…”

Angler apps as a source of recreational fisheries data: opportunities, challenges and proposed standards

“…A recent analysis found that effort data from a popular angler app in Alberta, Canada, were comparable to creel and mail survey data at regional and seasonal scales (Papenfuss et al 2015; see also Martin et al 2014). These conventional methods are relatively expensive and time-consuming, and often limited in space and time.…”

Reservoir Area of Influence and Implications for Fisheries Management

“…Only 12 of the 17 reservoirs included Omaha in their 95% area of influence, most of which are on the northern portion of the region, closer to Omaha, or are larger, more well-known reservoirs. This suggests that anglers are willing to travel farther to fish reservoirs that are more well-known and are perhaps discussed more frequently through either word-of-mouth communication or online social media (Martin et al 2014). Furthermore, the area of influence did not increase as the number of observations (i.e., anglers interviewed) increased, contrary to what has been suggested (Seaman et al 1999), indicating that our sample sizes were larger than those typical of studies using kernel density estimation.…”