2001 West Coast Open Party and Charter Recreational Fishing Vessel Survey

 


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Survey Instrument

Click below to see the questions asked in the survey


Background

During 1995-1997, recreational fishermen accounted for 29%-34% of total ocean salmon landings on the Pacific coast. With regard to groundfish, the recreational fishery takes a modest share of overall Pacific coast landings, but does account for a significant share of the harvest of certain groundfish stocks. Charter vessels account for close to 50% of the ocean recreational harvest of both salmon and groundfish. Groundfish (particularly rockfish and lingcod) and salmon are the primary target species for charter boats operating in northern California, Oregon and Washington. Even in southern California, where salmon are customarily not caught and a variety of other target species are available to the fishery, charter vessels rely heavily on rockfish as a stable source of revenue when other less predictable species are not available.

As a result of declining groundfish stocks and increasing competition for the available harvest, the Pacific Fishery Management Council (Council) is faced with a number of significant commercial-recreational allocation issues, most immediately with regard to lingcod and bocaccio. The salmon fishery has also been subject to restrictive regulations due to listings of certain salmon runs under the Endangered Species Act. Data from a 1998 economic survey of marine anglers funded by the Science and Technology Office of the National Marine Fisheries Service are currently being used to model the effect of changes in groundfish and salmon regulations on angler demand. A natural extension to this modeling effort would be to determine the subsequent effects of such changes in angler demand on charter operations.

Methodology

Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission (PSMFC) completed a survey generating cost and earnings information for the year 2000 from the West coast charter and head boat fleet. The survey was administered by telephone interviews conducted by Economic Fisheries Information Network (EFIN) staff. The universe targeted by the survey consisted of vessels operating out of California, Oregon and Washington that provided ocean recreational fishing trips on a commercial basis during 1997-1998. All revenue-generating activities were covered in the survey, including whale watching trips, scuba trips, and recreational fishing trips in U.S., Mexican and Canadian waters. However, vessels that provided whale watching or scuba trips but did not provide ocean recreational fishing trips were excluded from the survey. Vessels confining their operations exclusively to Puget Sound were also excluded.

Economics

The final collected Cost and Earnings data was used to compute the Mean, Median, Minimum value, Maximum value, Standard Deviation and Number of Responses for each question asked in the telephone interview. This report groups the results by region and size class. Additionally, coast wide results are also grouped by two size classes: Large/Medium and Small.

Final Document

Click here to download a copy of the final report in .pdf format.


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