Fishing Effort Survey Research and Improvements

This page outlines our previous and ongoing research on our Fishing Effort Survey. The FES collects private recreational fishing trip information to estimate recreational fishing effort. The FES is administered from Maine to Alabama and in Hawaii.

New England/Mid-Atlantic

Pacific Islands

Southeast

Improved Fishing Effort Survey

Improved Design: In January 2026, we began implementing the improved Fishing Effort Survey according to existing regional survey administration schedules.
Scientific Validation: Extensive testing and a favorable independent peer review indicates the new design offers improved utility for stock assessments and management decisions. In 2025, we concluded data collection, data analysis, and independent expert peer reviews as part of a large-scale study conducted throughout 2024 to test improvements to the FES.
More Accurate Estimates: The new FES should increase the accuracy of recreational effort estimates by mitigating potential overreporting of fishing trips through revising the question sequence. In addition, the survey is now administered monthly as opposed to every two months. Data from the study resulted in mean estimate reductions from the previous FES design of 22 percent for private boat and 9 percent for shore fishing.
Impact on Fisheries Management: In summer 2026, we will publish the calibrated historical estimates, which have been rescaled to the improved design using the updated peer-reviewed calibration model, for use in subsequent fisheries management decisions and stock assessments. The updated information could lead to changes in fishing regulations, such as new catch limits, that more accurately reflect the status of the fish stocks.
- It's important to note that the FES only produces private boat and shore fishing trip, or effort, estimates. All species catch information is collected through dockside/public-access interviews (Access Point Angler Intercept Survey). The effort information is generally multiplied by the catch information to estimate total catch for a species. Therefore, we won't know species-specific impacts until we have the calibrated estimates in summer 2026.
  - Catch estimation functions as a batch process, in which the revised effort time series is applied to all species simultaneously; therefore, there is no technical mechanism to prioritize or parse out individual species ahead of the full data release.
- NOAA Fisheries’ guidance to fisheries managers and stock assessors who currently use FES data is to continue using existing FES data until the historical estimates have been calibrated to the new FES design. We recognize there are important regional considerations (as outlined in the hyperlinked guidance document).
Effective Implementation: Alongside regional partners, we developed a collaborative transition plan to guide the implementation of the improved FES.

What led to testing an improved FES in 2026?

"Evaluating Measurement Error in the MRIP Fishing Effort Survey" is one of several studies NOAA Fisheries conducted to evaluate potential sources of bias in the FES as part of our continuous improvement process. This report was published in August 2023.

The pre-2026 FES asked respondents to report their fishing activity over a 2-month period and a 12-month period. In the 2023 pilot study, we changed the question order and first asked about fishing trips in the previous 12 months. Switching the sequence of questions resulted in fewer reporting errors and illogical responses, and effort estimates that were generally lower for shore and private boat modes than estimates produced from the current design. However, results varied by state and fishing mode. In addition, based on anecdotal information from angler interviews, we suspect that anglers are eager to report fishing activity, so they may do so at the earliest possible opportunity when questioned, which may lead to reporting trips outside of a given timeframe.

To verify these results and also determine the impacts of increased survey administration, the team determined a follow-up study was necessary. In addition, the pilot study was conducted over 6 months with a smaller sample size than the current FES sample size. The 2024 follow-up study allowed for a full year of side-by-side comparison between the current FES and a revised design, as well as a larger sample size. The 2024 tested design also increased the administration of the survey from every two months to monthly. Monthly sampling provides future flexibility to produce more frequent estimates.

Transitioning to a Mail Effort Survey From a Telephone Survey

In 1979, the Coastal Household Telephone Survey (CHTS) began to collect data about fishing effort by dialing a random sample of residential households in Hawaii and along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. While random digit dialing (RDD) was a standard sampling methodology for conducting household surveys, there were known limitations to this approach. As these limitations grew more pronounced over time—due in large part to a decline in the use of landline telephones—the accuracy of the survey’s estimates began to suffer.

In its 2006 review of the methods we used to collect recreational fishing data and report recreational catch, the National Research Council recommended fundamental changes to our data collection techniques and acknowledged the limitations of collecting information through random-digit dialing. In response, the Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP) began to explore ways to improve how we understand and estimate the number of fishing trips taken by shore and private boat anglers in Hawaii and on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. In 2018, we adopted a new Fishing Effort Survey (FES).

Coverage Error

Since the early 2000s, the percentage of adults living in homes with landline telephones has steadily declined. According to estimates from the 2018 National Health Interview Survey, more than half of all American homes don’t have landline phones. Among homes with landline and wireless phones, 42% receive all or almost all of their calls on a mobile device. In other words, 15% of American homes can be considered wireless-mostly, and 70% have effectively excluded themselves from being sampled by landline-based telephone surveys.

From 2000 on, the exclusion of wireless-only households from the pool of households we sampled meant our samples were growing less and less representative of the general population. Landline-only households, for example, report older residents and fewer children, and are more likely to be composed of single women and to report health and mobility problems. These demographic differences are correlated with differences in fishing activity: the landline-only households—the only households that could be reached by the CHTS—are much less likely to report fishing than the general population.

Measurement Error

The CHTS contacted households without prior notice; asked initial respondents a series of screener questions to determine whether anyone in the household fished during the two-month reference wave; and expected initial survey respondents to immediately describe household-level fishing activity without the benefit of memory cues. Most initial respondents were women, who were much less likely to report household-level fishing activity than men. Under this “gatekeeper effect,” the people who were answering our calls did not always accurately report—and in many cases, underreported—their households’ fishing effort.

Pilot Studies and Peer Review

Between 2007 and 2013, MRIP conducted a series of pilot studies to identify a more accurate and efficient way to estimate fishing effort.

Methods Tested

A telephone survey that used fishing license information rather than random-digit dialing as its sampling frame.
A dual-frame telephone survey that used fishing license information and random-digit dialing as its sampling frame.
A dual-frame mail survey and a dual-frame, mixed-mode telephone and mail survey that sampled anglers from state databases of licensed saltwater anglers and residential address frames maintained by the U.S. Postal Service.
A mail survey whose design was revised in an effort to address weaknesses identified in prior studies, increase response rates, and eliminate biases resulting from inaccurate matches to the address frame.

Assessing Non-response Bias

In 2013, a non-response follow-up study demonstrated no significant differences in fishing activity between those who initially responded to the FES and those who responded to a follow-up questionnaire. This suggests non-response to the FES is not a significant source of bias. Routine comparisons between preliminary and final estimates of fishing prevalence also show no significant differences between early and late survey responders.

Results

The FES provides a more representative sample of the population we survey.
The FES is less susceptible to bias resulting from non-response and non-coverage.
The FES gives more household members more time to provide complete answers, which is believed to produce more accurate responses to questions about fishing activity.
The FES is a more efficient method of collecting fishing data and a superior approach for monitoring recreational fishing effort.
Differences between CHTS and FES estimates can largely be attributed to differences in fishing activity between the households in each survey’s sample frame. These differences in fishing activity are correlated with differences in demographic characteristics, such as age, gender, and number of children at home.

Peer Review

In 2014, Development and Testing of Recreational Fishing Effort Surveys: Testing a Mail Survey Design (PDF, 56 pages) underwent rigorous peer review. Reviewers included staff from NOAA Fisheries’ Office of Science and Technology, three independent experts selected by the American Statistical Association’s Survey Research Methods Section, and five members of an external expert consultant team. Reviewers provided comments on the methods, results, and conclusions described in the report, and concurred with the overall findings and recommendations to implement a single-phase mail survey design.

In 2015, the design of the FES was certified (PDF, 6 pages) as a scientifically sound and suitable replacement for the CHTS.

Transition Plan

To minimize the potential for disruptions to fisheries science and management, a cross-disciplinary Transition Team of state and federal partners, scientists, stock assessors, and managers was established to develop a process for transitioning from the CHTS to the FES. The team’s Atlantic and Gulf Subgroup prepared a transition plan and timeline (PDF, 34 pages).

Benchmarking

From 2015 through 2017, the FES and CHTS were conducted side-by-side. During this period, estimates produced by the CHTS were considered the best available for use in scientific assessments. The FES Transition Progress Report (PDF, 10 pages) describes the results from the first full year of this benchmarking period.

Developing a Calibration Model

Between 2016 and 2017, NOAA Fisheries staff and independent expert consultants worked to develop a calibration model to re-estimate statistics produced by the CHTS, which would soon be discontinued as a legacy survey design.

Calibration is a critical step in transitioning to a new recreational fishing survey. Because our work to foster healthy, productive, and sustainable marine fisheries requires a consistent, long-term time series of recreational catch statistics, calibration must be used to place historical estimates into the scale of the new survey design to allow for meaningful comparisons to be made.

Discontinuing the CHTS and Implementing the FES

On December 31, 2017, the CHTS was discontinued. As of January 1, 2018, the FES is used to produce all federal estimates of fishing effort.

In March 2018, Transition Team co-chairs led a NOAA Central Library Brown Bag seminar about the transition process. In July, they delivered a presentation (PDF, 34 pages) via webinar about the transition process and our work to calibrate historical effort estimates.

Re-estimating Historical Recreational Fisheries Statistics

Once our calibration model was peer reviewed and approved, we converted effort estimates dating back to 1981 to the scale of the FES. (A similar peer-reviewed process was used to adjust historical catch estimates following the 2013 transition to an improved Access Point Angler Intercept Survey (APAIS) sampling design.) In 2018, federal stock assessments began to incorporate these calibrated recreational fishing statistics. Learn how recreational catch estimates inform stock assessments, and how stock assessments inform fisheries management.

Technical Workshops and Reports

In 2019, we participated in a multi-day workshop with the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee, held to explain the differences between CHTS and FES-produced estimates. Following the workshop, the committee agreed the FES marks an improvement in our work to measure fishing activity and endorsed the use of estimates calibrated to and produced by the FES in assessing stocks.

Similar presentations were delivered to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission's Management and Science Committee, and to the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council's Scientific and Statistical Committee.

More Information

Last updated by Office of Science and Technology on 04/16/2026

Marine Recreational Information Program