Evaluation of the bus-route creel survey method in a large Australian marine recreational fishery - II. Pilot surveys and optimal sampling allocation

Pilot studies of the bus-route creel survey method were conducted in the South Australian marine scalefish fishery to evaluate characteristics of the fishery that would influence survey design and the method's performance in obtaining angler interviews. Analysis of fishing effort did not show a significant difference between weekdays and weekends or between mornings and afternoons, although the power of these analyses was low. Afternoon surveys yielded significantly greater number of interviews than morning surveys with relative sample sizes of 3.5-16.2% of the estimated parties fishing on the sampling day. Non-uniform probability sampling of mornings and afternoons suggested that a sample size of around 10% of fishing parties could be achieved. Optimal sampling allocation was then used to estimate the precision of effort, harvest per unit effort and harvest estimates for Sillaginodes punctata. Relative precision levels of 10% or less could be achieved for each variable with sampling frequencies of 50-60 days per spatial stratum. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.