Councilor McBride addressed the Council urging it to support the greater involvement of New York State (DEC) in collecting marine recreational fishery statistics in New York, noting that this is near-universal unhappiness with the current system, which relies solely on the National Marine Fisheries Service’s Marine Recreational Fisheries Statistics Survey (MRFSS).  New York State should do what other states have done; either conduct their own supplemental data collection to the MRFSS collections in their state, or take the MRFSS funds from NMFS and run the entire statistics collection program itself.  Mr. McBride argued that the easiest and best way to increase the efficiency and of the survey, and the accuracy of the statistics on marine recreational fishing in New York that it produces, is to have the state take over the survey or at least to significantly expand its coverage.

In response to Mr. McBride’s comments, Mr. Colvin said that the ACCSP (Atlantic Coastal Cooperative Statistics Program) recommends the MRFSS program as the standard program for the collection of recreational catch and effort data on the East Coast.  ACCSP explicitly recognizes the need to improve MRFSS by expanding the number of telephone interviews and the number of intercepts, in each coastal state and coast wide.   DEC wants to increase the MRFSS effort in New York at least to the level recommended by ACCSP, if not beyond it.   The Department expects this MRFSS expansion to occur within the next year or two, as part of an anticipated $1 million increase in New York’s annual Wallop-Breaux apportionment.  Mr. Colvin stated that the ACCSP has recommended that MRFSS not only be expanded, but that its management be de-centralized among the several states, with each state providing on-site, daily management to MRFSS activities.  In one scenario under active consideration, this management would be conducted by the state’s marine fisheries management agency (with funding provided in whole or in part by NMFS through a contract with the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC), or contracted by that agency to a third party contractor.  The management staff would be hired by ASMFC but detailed on-site to the state agencies, working to oversee and manage the data at a state level.  DEC is very interested in this approach, although AFMSC has certain reservations about this arrangement that would need to be assessed and resolved before such a program could be implemented.

It was recognized that the major problem with the MRFSS system is not a poor design.  Rather, the major problem is that the system’s design was not intended to produce recreational fishery catch data that would be subsequently used in establishing and tracking quantitative harvest quotas on a state-by-state basis.  MRFSS was intended and designed to support coast wide marine recreational fisheries management.

Councilor McBride moved that the Council express its support for the Department to either significantly supplement the MRFSS survey in New York and/or take over entirely the management of the survey in this state.  This motion was adopted; the vote was 4 in favor; 1 opposed; 7 abstentions. 

 

Page last modified Monday, July 5, 2004 by George E. Carroll