A programmatic review of the Sport Fish Division statewide harvest survey

A team composed of staff members representing the three management regions, Research and Technical Services, Habitat, and Headquarters of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Sport Fish Division (SFD) met during October 2004 through June 2005 to review and make recommendations for updating the Statewide Harvest Survey (SWHS) program. The team developed and prioritized a list of information needs from data that could be reasonably collected from a statewide survey of recreational anglers in Alaska. Information needs were then categorized by the type of survey necessary to meet the need, relative to the current Statewide Harvest Survey program. A purpose statement for the SWHS program was developed as well as a list of short and long term recommendations for changes to the program to meet identified needs. The existing SWHS continues to meet many of the highest priority needs of the SFD, but does not address many current needs that were not envisioned when the current SWHS was first implemented in 1977. For example, the need for daily and annual bag limit analyses on a statewide or regional basis is not adequately met by the current SWHS. Moreover, the current SWHS does not address the need to link angler demographics, attitudes, and behavior with angler effort and harvest. While many improvements can be made to the current SWHS program to fully meet additional information needs, significant changes to the survey design, survey instrument, and methods of survey delivery will not be possible without improvements to sport fish licensing data capture. Any future implementation of a statewide survey of anglers will have to address the issues of angler recall; reducing complexity and length of the survey instrument(s); improving response rate; improving fish species identification; improving site selection; and, modernizing the survey delivery, data collection, and data management systems.