Video Assessment of Recreational Discards

Recent efforts to control harvest in recreational fisheries have had the unintended consequence of increasing the numbers of released fish that are vulnerable to post-release mortality. In tightly regulated fisheries, the number of released fish can far outnumber the harvested portion of catch and mortality of released fish has the potential to exceed harvest. For fisheries-dependent surveys of recreational fishing, the increasing number of released fish has translated into a growing portion of catch that is unavailable for direct observation. Numbers of discarded fish are more difficult to quantify with precision than harvested catch, due largely to the fact that current methods rely on angler recall sometime after the trip has occurred. A small portable camera system was developed to record the species and lengths of discarded fish in an effort to gain a better understanding of discarded fish than angler recall can provide.  The camera system was developed to withstand the rigors of being at sea. One high resolution camera focuses on a length board and 3 wide angle cameras observed the action onboard the vessel. The camera on the length board was used for fish identification and to get a length measurement and the other cameras ensured that all caught fish are measured. The wide angle cameras were also used to determine the feasibility of the camera system to provide a gross visual assessment of release condition. Fish that would have been discarded were retained and then compared to the video record, to assess the effectiveness of the camera system and the accuracy of the measurements generated by the video readers.