Towards a New Design and Estimation Approach for the Access Point Angler Intercept Survey in the U.S.: Results from a Pilot Study

The U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service has been conducting the Access Point Angler Intercept Survey (APAIS) to estimate characteristics of recreational catch in U.S. coastal waters.  New sampling design and estimation procedures have recently been proposed for the APAIS and are described elsewhere.  In this presentation, we provide an overview of a pilot study conducted in North Carolina from January to December 2010.  The pilot study implemented a number of key aspects of the new methodology, including construction of a new sampling frame of fishing sites suitable for applying formal sampling methods, a new constrained sampling approach that explicitly accounts for interviewer scheduling, a redesign of the interview protocols, and improvements in the estimation methods to account for the complex sampling design.  We discuss some of the lessons learned in implementing the new sampling and data collection methods.