The National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced plans last Thursday to revise its effort to survey recreational fishermen. NOAA is seeking comments on its plan to replace the Marine Recreational Information Program with a new Marine Recreational Information Program Fishing Effort Survey.
NOAA regularly surveys recreational anglers about when they fish, how much and what types of fish they catch, and socioeconomic data about who fishes. Traditionally, NOAA surveyed people by random digit dialing. It is replacing the phone survey with a mail-in survey after testing the mail option in four states.
Now it plans to use it in all coastal states except Texas, Hawaii and Puerto Rico. These jurisdictions do their own surveys.
NOAA plans to survey 153,000 people a year and estimates it will take them an average of 10 minutes to fill out the form. You can send comments and suggestions to NOAA by June 3. Details: www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2013-04-04/html/2013-07833.htm.
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