Fishery-dependent vs. Fishery-independent data

Fishy Fridays

Weekly spotlight on fisheries science journal articles

 

Jeff Kopaska
AFS Executive Director
[email protected]

AFS has recently transitioned to Oxford University Publishing (OUP), and all of the AFS current and historic publications are now housed within the OUP system. AFS is currently finalizing the first OUP issues of the majority of our journals, but our open-access Marine and Coastal Fisheries (MCF) journal has already completed an issue from OUP.  Today’s article is from MCF, and it I love how it links back to some of my previous work in Iowa. The paper, Comparing fishery-independent and fishery-dependent data to characterize West Coast groundfish populations, is an area I find important. The inland fisheries I am familiar with undergo regular and standardized sampling (fishery-independent), but fishery-dependent data is rarer. I had to invert my thinking for the paper, because the fishery-dependent data is the historical standard, while the fishery-independent is much more recent. Stepping beyond this, anglers spread much more time “sampling” fish populations than fisheries staff, so their data and insights are valuable, just rarely quantified. I believe citizen science-based contributions to our data and management are important aspects to how our profession will progress in the future. The more we can engage with the broader fisheries community in this endeavor, the better and more diversified our profession will be as a result.