Editor's note: The Marine Recreational Fisheries Statistics Survey or MRFSS is a survey by the government that attempts to determine the number of fish that saltwater anglers catch. Anglers might remember being approached at the dock and being asked by a government worker to take a survey about the anglers' catch that day, and those workers are from MRFSS.

The government sometimes uses the data from the surveys to help determine bag limits for anglers. The MRFSS web site says: "The purpose of the Marine Recreational Fishery Statistics Survey is to establish a reliable data base for estimating the impact of marine recreational fishing on marine resources."

But many in the recreational fishing industry and in recreational fishing conservation have criticized the survey as highly inaccurate. For example, MRFSS data said that less than 200 weakfish were caught in the entire state of New York during a recent year. Some individual anglers surely caught that many within days or less by themselves. And those data are helping to determine the weakfish bag limit?

The government seems to have agreed that MRFSS should be improved, because the recently reauthorized Magnuson-Stevens Act requires the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to overhaul its methods for collecting recreational fishing data. NOAA has begun the overhaul, and the below article announces that NOAA has formed a committee to lead the effort.

From the NOAA Fisheries Service:

A committee of fisheries managers and scientists from Fisheries, the interstate marine fisheries commissions, and the regional fishery management councils has been established to lead an upgrade of NOAA's recreational fishing statistics program.  The structure and charge of the group, known as the Executive Steering Committee, was outlined in the Development Plan released publicly last month. Within the next several weeks, the Committee will review the effort's proposed governance structure, establish an operations team and develop a list of possible members, and begin setting milestones and timelines for issue specific work groups. The recently reauthorized Magnuson-Stevens Act gave NOAA Fisheries until January 2009 to implement an improved recreational data program.

Members of the executive Steering Committee include: John Boreman (NOAA Fisheries – Office of Science and Technology), Randy Fisher (Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission), Bob Fletcher (NOAA's Marine Fisheries Advisory Committee and a recreational fisherman), Doug Mecum (NOAA Fisheries – Alaska Regional Office), Vince O'Shea (Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission), Kitty Simonds (Western Pacific Fishery Management Council), Larry Simpson (Gulf States Marine Fisheries Commission), and Nancy Thompson (NOAA Fisheries – Northeast Fisheries Science Center). Tom Gleason (NOAA Fisheries – Management and Budget) will serve as an ex offico member. An additional member may be added to represent the Caribbean region.

For more information, please visit the Office of Science and Technology's Website.

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