608 



Fishery Bulletin 94(4), 1 996 



Warning awareness Warning importance 



n=72 n=38 



Unknown (16%) 



Source of warnings 



_^Sign(16%) 

 (24%) 



Effect of warnings 



n=38 



Print V Stf W Combo 



• v , \ 



Friends (5%) , her | 3%) 



n=38 

 (.Unknown 

 (50%) / \ C3A) 



8»KKft?Stop eating 

 ^^ some species (13%) 



Stop eating all species (3%) 



all species Eat less 



(13%) some species (8%) 



Figure 7 



Responses to health risk warnings by Santa Monica Bay anglers 

 who consumed white croaker, Genyonemus lineatus, in the Santa 

 Monica Bay seafood consumption study, September 1991 to Au- 

 gust 1992. 



abundant species (e.g. California halibut). Consum- 

 able-portion method estimates were generally higher 

 than fillet-model estimates for larger species and 

 lower for smaller species. With the consumable-por- 

 tion method, estimated rates were calculated only 

 for species in an angler's possession at the time of 

 the interview. In contrast, the fillet-model method 

 also provided consumption-rate estimates for species 

 not caught on the interview day. 



Fillet-model medians varied less between species 

 than did consumable-portion medians (Table 6) be- 

 cause the fillet-model method used fewer measure- 

 ment units for meal size. The angler estimated meal 

 size in relation to the model size (e.g. 0.5, 1.0, or 2.0 

 times the model). Thus, if the angler consumed a meal 

 equal in size to the model twice a month, his or her 

 consumption rate would be 10.7 g/day. The consum- 

 able-portion medians were more variable, in part 

 because the consumable-portion weights had more 

 divisions (i.e. grams). 



Consumption-rate distributions were strongly 

 right-skewed. Hence medians and upper-deciles pro- 

 vided more appropriate summaries than did arith- 

 metic means and 95% confidence limits. The skewed 

 distributions indicate that relatively few anglers had 

 high consumption rates, whereas many had low con- 

 sumption rates. All demographic groups examined 

 had right-skewed consumption-rate distributions. This 

 was true for all species or individual species. Similar 

 consumption-rate distributions for Michigan anglers 



were lognormal (Murray and Burmaster, 1994). An 

 upcoming paper 10 will describe statistically the con- 

 sumption rate distributions from the present study. 



In 1989, southern California anglers took 1.85, 

 1.66, and 1.13 million fishing trips on piers and jet- 

 ties, private boats, and party boats, respectively 

 (NFSP, 1992). Percentages of total anglers by fish- 

 ing mode (piers, private boats, and party boats, re- 

 spectively) were 40, 36, and 24% in 1989 and 42, 21, 

 and 37% in the present study. Pier anglers repre- 

 sented about the same percentage of the population 

 in both surveys. However, the present study differed 

 in having more party-boat than private-boat anglers. 

 Thus, there may be relatively fewer private-boat 

 anglers in Santa Monica Bay than in southern Cali- 

 fornia as a whole. Because the NFSP estimates were 

 from fishing trips, some anglers may have repeated 

 trips. Hence, the trips do not accurately represent 

 the numbers of different anglers (which we needed 

 for consumption rates). 



We used only data collected in our study to calcu- 

 late consumption rates. Where we summarized data 

 for the whole study population, we combined data 

 for each fishing mode (i.e. piers, party boats, and 

 private boats). We did not adjust these estimates for 



10 Hill, M. D , and D. M. Lee. 1996. Estimated distributions 

 of average daily fish consumption rates among Southern Cali- 

 fornia marine anglers. Calif. Environ. Protection Agency, Sac- 

 ramento, CA. In prep. 



