III. DEFICIENCIES IN THE CURRENT INFORMATION BASE 



A. General Considerations 



To facilitate the reader in the discussions which follow, statements 

 of some general considerations and perspectives are in order. The first of 

 these is that many fisheries have both commercial and recreational user 

 groups. Between fisheries withamixture of user groups, one can anticipate 

 that the relative catches of commercial and recreational users will vary 

 greatly. Moreover, even within such a mixed fishery one can expect to find 

 a continuum ranging from purely commercial users to purely recreational 

 users. Consquently, while a commercial/recreational dichotomy is useful 

 it is potentially misleading. The important point however is that the Act 

 requires consideration of both commercial and recreational benefits in 

 establishing OSY. For this reason, the discussion which follows is parti- 

 tioned first of all into commercial vs. recreational uses of fisheries. 



A second distinction is made between data needs for monitoring and 

 management decisions, which are repetitive and continuous, versus data needs 

 for various isolated problems which arise and which involve more or less 

 unique, non-repetitive decisions. This distinction appears repeatedly in 

 the discussions which follow. 



B. Commercial Fisheries 



1. Established Fisheries 



(a) Vessel inventories and characteristics 



Sample design for collecting data by vessel type presupposes a current 

 inventory of vessels from which strata can be designed and samples drawn. 

 It is imperative that such inventories be compiled and maintained current 



