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list provides a set of research topics or surveys which would help to provide 

 the data base necessary to carry out the recreational management objectives 

 of the Act. 



A) Conceptual studies developing the concept of OSY as it pertains 

 to jnarine recreational fishing. 



B) Empirical tests of conceptual models. These empirical tests would 

 involve work on the demand for sports fishing as a function of the tradi- 

 tional economic variables and some measure of the catch per outing. The 

 catch per outing could be in pounds, numbers of fish, or maximum size or 

 weight of the fish per outing. One of the objectives of the empirical work 

 would be to ascertain what types of catch per outing variables are most 

 important in the sports fishery demand functions. A second goal of the 

 empirical work would be to determine the impact of the recreational take on 

 selected species. 



C) Pilot studies for testing different data gathering systems. Even 

 if all the data needs for recreational fishing were known now, the state of , 

 the art of survey techniques is not sufficiently advanced to permit the data 

 to be gathered. The errors created in catch data and trip data by faulty 

 recall makes the ordinary phone or mail survey inadequate. Recall problems 

 also occur with site-specific surveys, although better catch can be obtained 

 through such surveys. The SMND has made significant developments in identify- 

 ing methodological survey problems and devising techniques to overcome these 

 problems. It would seem valuable to run a series of pilot surveys testing 

 devices for gathering the kinds of data needed to determine OSY. The state 

 of California has studied the various approaches (house-to-house, mail, 

 telephone, etc.) but more experimental studies are needed. 



