Isnapper: Design, Testing, and Analysis of a Smartphone-Based Application As an Electronic Logbook in the for-Hire Fisheries

A primary need in fisheries management is the ability to collect high quality and timely data from participants.  Recently, this has become particularly essential as it relates to recreational fisheries, especially reeffish fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico.  Because most fishermen in the recreational sector directly consume harvested fish and there are large numbers of diverse participants, reporting requirements for this sector are extremely limited.  Harvest is estimated through a combination of models derived from several surveys and the reporting requirements for headboats.  Because these techniques do not provide enough information to rapidly predict harvest (i.e. historically persistent overages in red snapper (Lutjanus campechanus) by recreational fishery), it has been suggested that increasing the reporting requirement for participants in the for-hire fisheries though an electronic logbook system would aid in increasing accuracy of harvest predictions.  This is an ongoing project with the overall goals of (1) developing an affordable, highly adaptable, simple to use, and portable application for "smart phones" (e.g., Apple iPhone) that functions as an electronic logbook in the Gulf of Mexico recreational for-hire fisheries; (2) developing a website that works synergistically with the phone application; and (3) evaluating its usefulness as a tool to collect socio-economic information on reeffish participants fishing from for-hire vessels. We will present preliminary results from an ongoing project that has outfitted 15 for-hire vessels in the Gulf of Mexico reeffish fishery.  In addition to basic catch data, we will report opinions of end users, data quality, comparisons to validation studies, program modifications, and how well it was received by reeffish participants fishing from for-hire vessels.