Boat Ramp Surveys
Background
Around half of NSW’s estimated 1 million recreational fishers fish from a boat during a typical year, many utilizing one of the state’s several hundred boat ramps. Surveying boat ramps is therefore a very efficient way to collect information on recreational fishing activity, the fishers and their catch.
The Boat Ramp Survey Program (BRS) is a voluntary program giving recreational fishers the opportunity to help contribute information to help DPI monitor and manage NSW’s fisheries resources.
How do we collect the information?
The BRS uses trained interviewers to intercept trailer boat fishing parties on return from fishing trips. The fishers are then asked to provide some very basic fishing information about themselves, their trip and their catch.
Each interview should only take a couple of minutes, and the interviewer will enter any information provided on digital tablet. All data collection is anonymous—the interviewer will not ask for your name or any contact information.
Surveys are performed on randomly allocated days across a range of coastal boat ramps state-wide. This allows the data to better reflect patterns in boat-based recreational fishing activity.
Importantly, the interviewers are not there to enforce the law, only to collect scientific data for research.
What information is collected?
Very simple information is collected on the fisher’s licence category (or exemption), where they fished and for how long, what was caught, how many were kept and released, and some high level demographic information that is necessary to calibrate the data collected (e.g., gender, post-code of residence, age bracket).
If one of 30 priority recreational species were kept, interviewers will also measure the lengths of the retained catch. Currently priority species for BRS monitoring include Bream, Dusky Flathead, Snapper, Sand Whiting, Bluespotted Flathead, Luderick, Tailor, Grey Morwong, Pearl Perch, Spanish Mackerel, Yellowtail Kingfish and Teraglin; however data is collected from all species of recreational importance reported caught by fishers during an interview.
All fishers and encouraged to review the RFMP participant information summary available here. Importantly, participation in the research is completely voluntary, and any information provided through the surveys is de-identified and completely confidential.
What do we do with the information?
Information collected by the BRS are an important companion dataset to that collected by the biennial 12 month Recreational Fishing Research Surveys and are run simultaneously with them, under the Recreational Fisheries Monitoring Program (RFMP).
By combining the data we get from the Recreational Fishing Research Surveys with the length, catch and fisher data we get from the BRS, the RFMP is able to contribute important recreational fishery information to monitoring and stock assessment of key exploited species in NSW.
Further Information
If you require further information regarding the BRS, please contact:
