Justificaiton for change for intercept survey

JUSTIFICATION FOR CHANGE

MRIP ACCESS POINT ANGLER INTERCEPT SURVEY (APAIS)

OMB CONTROL NO. 0648-0659

Change request for responses to the questionnaire:

Question 24. New wording in red: “In the event that my supervisor wishes to verify that I have been conducting interviews here today, or to contact you for a subsequent mail survey concerning saltwater angler preferences, may I have your name, address, a telephone number and an email address, if available?” This modified question is needed for scheduled angler preference mail surveys to be conducted by NOAA Fisheries, Northeast Region, in 2014 and to provide multiple contact methods for verifying APAIS field interviewer conduct as part of the MRIP quality assurance program. These additional response fields are not expected to add any additional time to the total response burden approved for the APAIS.

NEW questions to be added to the MRIP APAIS survey questionnaire to be administered in North Carolina only. These questions will not add any additional burden hours to the total approved for APAIS.

Justification for questions (red font on the accompanying questionnaire):

Question 11a: “Were you tournament fishing today?” North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries has a very robust tournament program. Tournament data captured through MRIP is utilized to provide information on the geographic distribution of participants, temporal distribution, economics, tournament target species and the overall impact on management.

Question 11b: “Did you see any sea turtles while fishing today?” The North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries has developed a Protected Species Section to prepare incidental take permits and comment on related permits. Sea turtle sightings are currently being scrutinized by our protected species personnel as they develop and improve sea turtle interaction sampling, they will continue to rely in part on the historic and present sighting information captured through APAIS. Sighting data is routinely requested by the US Army Corps of Engineers to schedule maintenance dredging of North Carolina’s coastal inlets.

Question 13a: “Were you fishing near an Artificial Reef?” North Carolina has a very prolific artificial reef section. MRIP artificial reef participation data is utilized to validate North Carolina’s artificial reef programs. Local fishing clubs of North Carolina will seek funding to construct new reefs, add or maintain existing reefs. These data has also been coupled with economic survey data to calculate the economic impact constructed reefs have on local communities by examining the makeup of anglers sampled that fished upon reefs.

Question 13b: “What was the length of the boat used in feet?” Information on private and for-hire boat length is considered during the planning phase for constructing artificial reefs. Information on sizes of boats used by private and charter boat anglers allows reef management personnel necessary information for distributing reefs for all size classes of boats. Our for-hire sector is made up of large charter vessels as well as smaller guide boats; information on sizes of for-hire boats was incorporated in the planning process for developing our new license structure. The ability to partition these groups with a time series of data will be utilized this year when planning a mandatory logbook reporting program. Consideration of boat size and species targets and composition will be incorporated in the development modes of reporting.

Question 23b: “How old were you on your last birthday?” This information was extensively utilized when developing North Carolina saltwater license legislation. If amendments to existing legislation are ever considered, a timeline of age information will again be necessary.

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