Why should you report?

To help managers learn more about recreational reporting

Your participation in MyFishCount will help paint a clearer picture of recreational fisheries in the South Atlantic and help develop successful recreational reporting tools.

 

To become a better angler

MyFishCount does more than keep track of the fish you catch. It is also a personal fishing log! Information from previous trips can be useful in planning and improving future trips. Your fishing log and data will be kept confidential. Please see the “Data Uses” and “Confidentiality” sections in the “About ” menu.

 

To provide more data

Information submitted through MyFishCount supplements data gathered under the current monitoring program, the Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP). MRIP estimates the number of fish caught and how often people fish by interviewing anglers at fishing sites (such as docks, beaches, and boat ramps) and through mail-based surveys. MRIP works well for most nearshore species, but fewer anglers target offshore species such as deep-water grouper species. Those offshore fishing trips are less likely to be “caught” by MRIP interviewers, as the graphic below suggests.

 

In the example below, green anglers fish for flounder, gray ones fish for red drum, and blue ones fish for snapper grouper species. The anglers in the circle represent those who were interviewed after their fishing trips.

You can see that several flounder and red drum fishermen were interviewed, providing an adequate representation of those fisheries. However, only one snapper grouper fisherman was interviewed so we don’t know as much about that group. Gathering more information to supplement the current monitoring program will help us learn about fishing trips that are not sampled very often.

 

Information you submit through MyFishCount helps us learn about fishing trips that are not sampled very often and supplement MRIP data. It is still important that you continue to participate in MRIP surveys, should you be given the opportunity