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June 12^th, 2024

Cisco Werner, Ph.D.
Chief Science Advisor
NOAA Fisheries
1315 East-West Highway
Silver Spring, MD 20910

Dear Dr. Werner:

We, as representatives of the recreational fishing community, request that NOAA Fisheries adopt the following recommendations to improve the production and application of recreational economic data. These recommendations emerged from the Recreational Fisheries Economic Constituent Workshop hosted by NOAA Fisheries and held in Tampa, Florida on April 25-26, 2023. With increased use of reliable economic information, the actions we request will help fisheries managers better meet the national standards required by the Magnuson Stevens Act (MSA):

National Standard 1’s Optimum Yield requirements: “Conservation and management measures shall prevent overfishing while achieving, on a continuing basis, the optimum yield from each fishery for the United States fishing industry.”

– and –

National Standard 2: “Conservation and management measures shall be based upon the best scientific information available.”

To better meet these standards, we recommend:

1. Increase development of fishery-specific recreational demand models that calculate angler benefits as an output variable. Specifically, to better understand major fisheries’ optimal yield, efforts must continue to develop and improve bio-economic models such as those being explored for the Northeast’s cod and haddock fishery, the Gulf of Mexico’s recreational gag grouper fishery and as applied to the mid-Atlantic’s summer flounder, black sea bass, and scup fisheries. These models can help explain how proposed fisheries management policies will impact the benefits anglers receive from fishing as well as catch rates and the fish stocks in consideration. Bio-economic models are also needed for other major frequently contested fisheries such as Pacific salmon.
2. Develop a more comprehensive and reliable system of collecting recreational effort, participation, benefit/value and spending data, with greater species-specific estimates. To accomplish recommendation #1, fisheries-specific angler data are required. Specific recommendations include:
   1. Working with current angler data collection efforts, NGO partners, states and regional bodies, refine or replace current marine recreational fisheries participation data collection efforts to cover all states. Effort, participation, expenditure and angler satisfaction data should be collected for private and for-hire fisheries for as many specific fisheries as possible.
   2. Estimate the full range of recreational expenditures, including durable goods.
   3. Consider a public repository, whether new or expanded existing systems, for all marine fisheries economic data and reports: This online resource would publicly share completed, reliable marine economics research reports and data.
3. Working with academic and private sector partners, expand efforts to explore and test new electronic technologies and services for boosting economic data collection. As response rates for traditional surveys continue to fall and people’s communication preferences continue to evolve towards electronic formats, our data collection efforts must also evolve. Greater resources must be applied to alternative, emerging data collection methodologies. We recommend NOAA Fisheries use existing grant programs to accelerate electronic reporting by identifying it as a priority topic in its request for proposals across appropriate grand funding opportunities.
4. Build greater trust with recreational anglers and stakeholders through improved communications: Implementing new data collection technologies and services will only succeed if anglers are willing to participate. However, anglers often distrust current data collection efforts as well as the fisheries management process that is driven by the underlying catch data and its limitations. This distrust reduces the quality and quantity of available participation and economic data. NOAA Fisheries, regional councils and commissions and the states should work with the recreational fishing community, especially anglers’ trusted media brands, to better engage with anglers about the importance of participating in data collection programs. We recommend a recreational communications council, possibly as part of an existing advisory body, comprised of recreational representatives and media, to help facilitate two-way communication with anglers.
5. Develop a built-in, systematic process to educate fisheries managers, appointed council and commission members and research scientists about the uncertainty associated with both economic and physical science research. Economic and fishery science research both have comparable levels of statistical uncertainty. But, considering the broader fisheries community generally shows less familiarity and greater distrust with economic research, its consideration during policy deliberations is often minimized. Managing to the MSA’s national standards will only happen once social science and economic data are accepted at levels matching decision makers’ acceptance of biological data. Increased acceptance will be easier to accomplish, in part, by the production of better economic data described in recommendation #2 above. The community will be better served by the implementation of systematic guidelines by NOAA Fisheries and the regional councils regarding when and how to interpret and incorporate available economic information in fisheries policies discussions. However, such guidelines are currently left to the National Environmental Policy Act Review Process. Unfortunately, NEPA rarely encourages further collection and review of socio-economic data and instead relies solely on available data which is often either very limited or non-existent, which leads to continued distrust and minimal consideration of economic data in the fisheries management process. A process more akin to the rigorous stock assessment review process seems most appropriate for elevating socio-economic data to the same level as biological data within the decision-making process.

These recommendations are supported in detail from the proceedings of the April 2023 workshop. We fully understand greater labor and financial resources will be required to achieve these recommendations. The recreational community stands ready to support NOAA Fisheries, the regional fishery management councils as well as state fisheries agencies in adopting these recommendations and securing necessary resources to the best of our abilities. Please let us know your ideas regarding the next steps and how we can work together. We appreciate and commend NOAA Fisheries’ recent efforts to improve economic data collection and communications. Thank you for your consideration.

Signed on behalf of the listed recreational fishing community members:

[MANUALLY SIGNED]

CC:        Janet Coit, NOAA Assistant Administrator

                  Russ Dunn, NOAA National Policy Advisor for Recreational Fisheries

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