Combining telephone and on-site surveys for the estimation of catches and expenditures by recreational fishers: the pilot survey of French recreational fisheries

In 2006, Ifremer, with the help of the polling institute BVA, implemented a pilot national study of recreational fisheries. The aim of the study was to assess the population involved in this activity, taking into account the diversity of recreational fishing activities, from seafood gathering to offshore angling. This study 180 | ICES Annual Science Conference 2007 was designed to provide first estimates of (i) fishing activity; (ii) catches and landings; and (iii) economic impacts of recreational fishing. The protocol implemented was two-step. First, a telephone survey of French households, based on a sampling frame of the entire French population of people aged 15+, was carried out to assess the population of fishers and give a first general view of the diversity of fishing practices, Information was also collected regarding catches and landings and expenditure at various temporal scales (annual, previous three months, last fishing trip). Second, on-site surveys were carried out to obtain precise measures of catches and expenditure per fishing trip. Sampling schemes for both phases of the survey work were designed such that data collected from telephone and on-site surveys could be combined and used jointly in the estimation of catches and expenditure by fishers at national level. The paper presents the methodology developed and first results obtained based on the joint use of the telephone and on-site survey data. Particular emphasis is placed on the way in which the methodology was designed to allow local observations of catches and expenditure per trip to be extrapolated to the national level.