Thanks to a grant from the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the South Carolina Wildlife Federation and the South Atlantic Marine Fisheries Council have partnered to develop a tutorial for saltwater anglers to help reduce bycatch mortality in snapper/grouper complex species and thereby enhance fisheries stocks for more fishing opportunities.

CLICK ON THE PHOTO BELOW TO ACCESS THE TUTORIAL.

This grant was developed to help reduce bycatch mortality in the snapper/grouper complex of species by educating anglers about Best Fishing Practices focusing on the effects of barotrauma, the effectiveness of descending devices on survival and that bycatch reduction would result in better stock assessments and more fishing opportunities.

The available literature indicates that discard mortality has a sizeable effect on fish stocks and that angler education is an effective tool to reduce it.

Accordingly, we designed a tutorial with help from an online education specialist instructional designer. The tutorial was Alpha and Beta tested, hosted on the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council (SAFMC) website and advertised through various websites, social media, fishing magazines and tackle shop flyers. The tutorial was converted to a presentation slide format and a total of 13 presentation workshops were conducted mostly for saltwater fishing clubs in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina.

Awarding up to 500 purchased SeaQualizer© descending devices to our trainees helped incentivize the trainings and subsequent descending device use. The SAFMC was a valuable partner on this project and several state Departments of Natural Resources (DNRs) offered helpful coordination.

Overall, we had 621 saltwater anglers sign pledges that they would employ all Best Fishing Practices learned in the trainings: 375 from tutorial takers and 246 from workshop attendees.

We met all our planned procedural objectives including establishing a good functioning partnership with SAFMC, developing an online tutorial and workshop presentation, recruitment of a minimum of 300 South Atlantic recreational anglers to complete the tutorial (actual 375), direct presentation of Best Fishing Practices content to a minimum of 200 recreational anglers through a total of 12 workshops in the four South Atlantic States (actual 13 workshops with 246 attendees), recruitment of 500 signed pledges to follow learned Best Fishing Practices (actual 621). Post-training survey polls of both tutorial users and workshop attendees indicated that all objectives of the project were met. These included: reaching our target audience, high grades for the effectiveness of the training, and significant knowledge increases on the topics of barotrauma and descending devices.

Post-training angler change in behavior indicated use of taught Best Fishing Practices, including using descending devices, favoring descending devices over venting, use of awarded SeaQualizer devices and recommended non-stainless steel fishing hooks and passing on learned Fishing Practices to other anglers.

Over 100 post-training survey responders (97%) indicted they have and will continue to pass on the learned Best Fishing Practices to other anglers. Also, the effective tutorial training will “live on” at the SAFMC website HERE. We anticipate that many more anglers will become familiar with the benefits and begin to adopt Best Fishing Practices, thereby reducing bycatch mortality and improving snapper/grouper complex stocks.