Traditional and Contemporary Measures of Recreational Fishing Activity to Inform Sustainable Management of Blue Swimmer Crab (Portunus armatus) Fisheries in Western Australia

Abstract

Recreational fishing is a popular activity that has many social and economic benefits. Monitoring has traditionally centred around measuring fishing effort and catch. However, contemporary measures, such as fisher demographics and behaviours, which may be linked to social and economic objectives, are now recognised as necessary to meet expectations that all aspects of resource use are considered for fisheries management. The challenge for recreational fisheries is how to regularly provide information across a growing diversity of metrics, and at a scale relevant to specific fisheries, with limited resources. The Blue Swimmer Crab (Portunus armatus) is one of the most commonly recreationally harvested species in Western Australia. This species served as a case study to explore if data from five broad‐scale phone‐diary surveys between 2011–2012 and 2020–2021 could be adapted to meet expanded information needs. Twelve discrete fisheries represented small spatial‐scale areas for fisheries management, with some variation in management arrangements (i.e., bag limits). Robust estimates of traditional and contemporary measures could be produced for three fisheries: Peel‐Harvey Estuary, Swan‐Canning Estuary and Geographe Bay. Traditional measures of participation, fishing effort, total catch and harvest from 2011–2012 to 2020–2021 were generally consistent for Swan‐Canning Estuary but decreased for Peel‐Harvey Estuary and Geographe Bay. The proportion of harvest from recreational and commercial fishing varied from mixed use (Swan‐Canning Estuary, Peel‐Harvey Estuary) to recreational only (Geographe Bay). Variation in contemporary measures was also evident, with recreational fishing largely undertaken by local residents in Swan‐Canning Estuary, while participation was more uniform between local and non‐local residents in Peel‐Harvey Estuary and Geographe Bay. We found that broad‐scale surveys could be successfully adapted to meet the growing need for information on contemporary measures to support a holistic approach to sustainable fisheries management for small spatial‐scale recreational fisheries.