48*3' 



Figure l. — Location of Mission Beach 

 within Puget Sound, Wash. The area 

 most intensively utihzed by crabbers at 

 Mission Beach is outhned with dashes. 



ia'i- 



BEACH / ^ 5»v , i^ 

 ACCESS \ ^ i ' 



KILOMETERS 

 DEPTH IN FATHOMS 



^ T" 



1 2 2* 30 



had been interviewed, the constructed counts 

 would coincide with actual beach use. However, 

 not all crabbers were interviewed, so the half- 

 hourly counts were more accurate for the lowest 

 period of the tide when most people were crabbing. 

 I then constructed a table for each month which 

 assigned the highest of the two estimates, either 

 the constructed count from the interviews or the 

 half-hourly beach count, to each half-hourly 

 period. The number of crabbers using the beach 

 was computed for each tide by dividing the total 

 crabber hours (the sum of the half-hourly counts) 

 by the average hours spent crabbing (obtained 

 from crabber interviews) and totaled for each 

 month. From the monthly table, the number of 

 crabbers on the beach at any half-hourly interval, 

 divided by the total number of people using the 

 beach for each month during the low tide period, 

 gave a percentage of people using the beach at any 



288 



half-hourly count. Monthly use curves were then 

 constructed for Mission Beach (Figure 2). 



The methods that I employed to develop use 

 curves were similar to those that have been used 

 by researchers who have dealt with other recrea- 

 tional fisheries (Miller and Gotshall 1965; Brown 

 1969; Tegelberg^; Jarman et al.^). 



In addition to the sampling that I conducted at 

 Mission Beach, personnel from the Washington 

 Department of Fisheries Shellfish Laboratory 

 conducted creel sampling at six other Puget Sound 

 beaches having differing levels of crabber use. 

 From the survey material that they provided, I 

 had insufficient data to construct use curves for 



^Tegelberg, H C 1963 The 1962 razor clam fisheries. 

 State Wash. Dep. Fish . 28 p. 



=Jarman, R.. C Bennet, C. Collins, and B. Brown 1970. 

 Angling success and recreational use of twelve state owned lakes 

 in Oklahoma. Paper given at 21st Annu. Meeting South. Div. 

 Am. Fish- Soc. New Orleans. La. 



