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In this essay, we explore the idea that slow social change may cause degradation of the open access equilibrium in recreational fisheries. An existing bioeconomic model illustrates how three social quantities in the recreational fisheries social–ecological system—the marginal cost of fishing effort, catchability, and the relative importance of catch and effort to angler utility—influence equilibrium fish abundance. We speculate that slow directional changes in all three of these quantities may be common, driving gradual declines in abundance that may be difficult to detect. We present limited evidence in support of this speculation, highlight the need for further empirical work, and discuss the implications of slow social change for resilient management of recreational fisheries in a changing world.

 

Recreational fisheries are culturally and economically important around the world. Recent research emphasizes that understanding and managing these systems requires a social–ecological perspective. We systematically reviewed quantitative social–ecological models of marine and freshwater recreational fisheries to summarize their conceptualization of social, ecological, and social–ecological dynamics and identify research frontiers. From a candidate set of 626 studies published between 1975 and 2018, 49 met criteria for inclusion in our review. These studies, though diverse in terms of focal species and processes considered, were geographically limited to a few locations and ignored large regions of the globe where recreational fishing is important. There were also important gaps in the social and ecological processes that were included in published models. Reflecting on these patterns in the context of previous conceptual frameworks, we define five key frontiers for future work: 1) exploring the implications of social and behavioural processes like heuristics, social norms, and information sharing for angler decisions and fishery dynamics; 2) modelling governance with more realistic complexity; 3) incorporating ideas from resilience thinking and complex adaptive systems, including slow variables, destabilizing feedbacks, surprises and diversity; 4) considering key ideas in fisheries systems, including spatial and temporal effort dynamics, catch hyperstability, and stocking; and 5) thinking synthetically about the models that we use to describe social–ecological dynamics in recreational fisheries, via explicit comparisons and formal integration with data. Exploration of these frontiers, while remembering the distinction between model complexity and model usefulness, will improve our ability to understand and sustain recreational fisheries.

 

Growing interest in apps to collect recreational-fisheries data requires that relationships between self-reported data and other fisheries data are evaluated, and that potential biases are assessed. This study compared results from a mobile-phone application and website for anglers (MyCatch) to results from three types of fisheries surveys — 1 provincial-level mail survey, 2 creel, and 17 gillnet surveys. Results suggest that an app and website can (i) recruit users that have a broad spatial distribution that is similar to conventional surveys, (ii) generate data that capture regional fishing patterns (2218 trips on 289 lakes and 90 streams or rivers), and (iii) provide catch rate estimates that are similar to those from other fisheries-dependent surveys. Some potential biases in app users (e.g., urban bias) and in the relative composition of species caught provincially were identified. The app was not a suitable tool for estimating fish abundance and relative community composition. Our study demonstrates how apps can or cannot provide a complementary data-collection tool for recreational-fisheries monitoring, but further research is needed to determine the applicability of our findings to other fisheries contexts.