The Importance of Validating the Duration of Fishing Trips: Are Harvest Rates from On-Site Recreational Fishing Surveys Unbiased?

Abstract Harvest rates are often used as indicators of fishing quality and in the estimation of total harvest in some on-site survey designs. The unbiased estimation of harvest and fishing effort is critical for calculating accurate harvest rates. On-site survey designs allow survey clerks to validate harvest data directly. This harvest validation assumes that the level of intentional deception by fishers is relatively small. Therefore, validating angler-generated estimates of trip duration is important because this can provide evidence that harvest rates and other variables derived from effort data are also unbiased. Also, one can partition effort and harvest within trips to calculate directed harvest rates for different target species or species groups, knowing that the angler-generated estimates of total trip length are not contributing systematically to any bias in the directed harvest rates. We examined the accuracy of trip duration estimates reported by trailer boat fishers in the marine waters of N...