Empowering Anglers: A New Era for Recreational Fishing Management

Recreational fishing is a vital part of the coastal economy and culture, but setting effective and fair regulations has always been a complex challenge. Now, a cloud-based Decision Support Tool is transforming this process by putting cutting-edge science and decision-making power directly into the hands of recreational fishing advisors and managers.

Design, Evaluate, and Select: the Power of the Decision Support Tool

In the past year, recreational advisors and management partners from North Carolina to Maine used the Decision Support Tool to design and evaluate more than 450 different fisheries regulations. They used it to evaluate two key fishery management plans: Northeast Multispecies (cod and haddock), and summer flounder, scup, and black sea bass.

It empowers these groups to:

• Develop potential regulations
• Consult with their constituents
• Select regulations that meet both their needs and conservation mandates

This innovative tool seamlessly connects NOAA Fisheries research to state fisheries managers and the recreational advisors who are on the water. It is designed to be easy to use and transparent. It allows managers to quickly evaluate how different combinations of measures impact recreational catch and angler satisfaction. Managers are then able to bring multiple options to their state fishery participants for feedback.

The Science Behind the Decisions

The tool provides a more complete picture of how fishing regulations impact both fish populations and the fishing community. It is built on two core components:

Economic Valuation Survey Information

Recreational anglers are regularly surveyed to collect data. This data allows us to model how fishing outcomes, such as the amount of fish kept and released, affect angler participation and satisfaction.

Biological Information

Biological data from the most recent, peer-reviewed stock assessments. These assessments combine state of the art scientific methods with best scientific information available from coastwide surveys, scientific research, and catch and effort data.

The two core components are combined in a custom built and innovative bio-economic model tailored to the fisheries in our region. We host our web app on the cloud, which allows us to take advantage of tremendous computing power to analyze how different fishing regulations affect recreational harvest and angler satisfaction. Access to the full model is limited to our management partners. However, you can explore the Cod and Haddock and Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass apps on FisheriesConnect.

Creating Stability and Preventing Overly Restrictive Rules

Historically, regulations were set based on recreational catch and effort data from the Marine Recreational Intercept Program. These data, while being the best scientific information available, can be highly variable and are not always representative of the biological stock information. Our new approach offers a better solution.

Since 2023, we have used our state-of-the-art bioeconomic model to get a better picture of how regulations and environmental conditions impact the decision to fish and how many fish are caught. This approach has reduced the number of overly restrictive regulations, while creating more stability in regulations across years. The intent is to gradually bring recreational landings to the recreational harvest limit instead of making large changes (up or down) to try and achieve the recreational harvest limit in a single year.

This process has led to major wins for specific stocks. Summer flounder recreational measures remained status quo in 2026. While increases in catch limits meant regulations could be liberalized, the lower stock biomass cautioned against a change in management. The tool allowed managers to balance these issues and leave regulations the same for this year. For scup, under the old management approach, exceeding past catch limits would have meant a large reduction for 2026. Due to the large biomass (323 percent above the target), management advice from the tool instead left measures at status quo. Black sea bass was able to be liberalized for the first time in more than 10 years due to the incorporation of biological information.

The Decision Support Tool is ushering in a new era of fisheries management-one that is more collaborative, science-driven, and responsive to the needs of the recreational fishing community.