President's Report

(07/01) TRENTON * Governor Jon S. Corzine has approved the appointment of veteran wildlife conservationist David Chanda to serve as Director of the Department of Environmental Protection's Division of Fish and Wildlife, DEP Commissioner Lisa P. Jackson announced today.

"I am confident that he will fulfill the duties and responsibilities of this position with competence and integrity," Gov. Corzine said in a letter notifying Commissioner Jackson of his decision to approve the New Jersey Fish and Game Council's unanimous appointment.

"During his 26-year tenure with the DEP, Dave has established himself as a highly skilled professional. His experience, expertise and commitment to conservation will further advance our efforts to offer all New Jersey residents and visitors world-class wildlife recreation," Commissioner Jackson said.

As director, Chanda will lead nearly 280 full-time employees responsible for managing more than 800 species of fish and wildlife in New Jersey. He will oversee the Division's $20-million budget as well as coordinate management and research programs for the state's inland wildlife, endangered species, shellfisheries, and freshwater and marine fisheries. Further, Chanda will head the Division's work in law enforcement, health and forensics, conservation education, environmental review and land management.

A native New Jerseyan, Chanda earned a bachelor's degree in Fish and Wildlife Management and a master's degree in Public Administration from Rutgers University. He joined the DEP in 1980 as an assistant biologist in the Division's Wildlife Education Unit, and later served as a deputy conservation officer; chief of the Division's Office of Wildlife Education and Information; and assistant director of the Division's bureaus of Wildlife Management, Law Enforcement, Land Management, Freshwater Fisheries Management and Marine Fisheries Administration, among other positions.

Chanda resides in Long Valley with his wife and three children.

Dr. Dave Van Vorhees:
NOAA-NMFS
Fishery Statistic Division
1315 East West Highway
Silver Spring, MD 20910

Comments on Report Evaluation and Improvement of Recreational Fishery Survey Methods

Dear Dr. Van Vorhees:

I am writing you with Jersey Coast Anglers Association’s comments on your draft report entitled, Evaluation and Improvement of Recreational Fishery Survey Methods. This 44 page report focuses on evaluating possible causes of bias in the current survey (MRFSS), as well as potential methodological enhancements that could improve this survey.

While we agree that all the items identified in the report should lead to better estimates, there are major issues that need to be addressed immediately. These include:

1. A need to make the MRFSS more efficient and more inclusive of all anglers. For example, the sampling of anglers only at access locations is very time consuming and expensive. NMFS should consider incomplete trip sampling by roving interviewers. For example, during the fall shore fishery for striped bass, it would greatly improve your sampling by walking the ocean beach as opposed to waiting at a walkway for anglers to leave the beach.
2. A need to sample nighttime fishermen. For example, during summer in the middle Atlantic area, a lot of the striped bass fishing occurs at night. Fishermen are off the beach by daylight (5 a.m.) and are not sampled under the current survey. Also, there is a need to sample nighttime fishing, especially for bluefish and weakfish. NOTE: Items number 6 and 7 of your report speaks to “special surveys” to determine if there is a difference between trips starting and ending during the 24-hour periods. However, there is no indication of how you will do this. This is a very important issue.
3. A need to better identify the sampling sites. We see that as fishing intensity changes, the major sites where fishermen depart often changes, yet the interview sites are set at the beginning of the year. These do not change until the following year. There needs to be flexibility built into changing your Master List as fishing intensity changes.
4. A need to better understand non-response. In addition to action 9.4 in your report (pg 8), many anglers will not cooperate because of frustration over more and ever-changing regulations. Also, people are reluctant to speak with interviewers for fear they may be in violation of some regulation. Rather than spending time on statistical analysis of existing data, they need to better understand why the non-response is occurring.
5. There needs to be established a communication pathway with MRFSS personnel, their contractor, state personnel, and angler organizations. This is needed to make certain the MRFSS adequately samples ever-changing fisheries. (This can be accomplished by conference calls with all these groups at the beginning, during and end of the season.)

1. Missing many landing locations in the Master List.
2. Private boats docking at private docks are not sampled.
3. Only sample between 3 p.m. and 9 p.m. Boats landing prior to this time or after this time are not sampled.
4. Still having problems with curved vs. straight-line measure of large pelagic fishes.

While vessels licensed for hire are required to fill out a trip report each time they fish, those reports are not utilized at all. They need to be compared with results from the MRFSS to see if there is any difference between the two data sets. Party and charter boat captains and anglers have been calling for this for years.

Other Comments  

1. The draft states that all recreational comments must be sent through MAFAC. This is a mistake. There is a lack of trust in MAFAC and anglers worry their comments will be filtered rather than reported. We suggest an advisory committee made up of recreational angling groups from the states that would review comments and develop an appropriate list for NMFS. The advisors should be chosen by the states they represent.
2. JCAA has always been concerned that better reporting will give us data about a larger pool of anglers and a much larger overall catch. Our fear is that NMFS will not see their previous data as an underestimation but use the new data to further restrict anglers and accuse us of overfishing. We need to use any new data attained through more accurate methods to develop a responsible retrospective analysis. We don’t want to be penalized just because the data is finally more accurate.
3. We really need to look at outliers as part of this process. In the real world beyond fisheries management, data collection builds in a system for dealing with outliers. The blackfish recreational catch in New York in 2002 and the weakfish catch in New Jersey in 2005 are prime examples. Instead of throwing these figures out as totally unreliable and skewing the data, NMFS continues to use this data year after year. We need a system in place to identify those outliers and either correct the data or refuse to use the misinformation for fisheries management decisions.

JCAA’s biggest concern about developing a new system for data collection is the mistrust that currently exists within the recreational community. There must be a perception that this new system is angler friendly and not designed to be used punitively. That is why the participation and support of the recreational community is vital to developing and selling this new system.