EVALUATION OF THE BUS-ROUTE CREEL SURVEY METHOD IN A LARGE AUSTRALIANMARINE RECREATIONAL FISHERY - II - PILOT SURVEYS AND OPTIMAL SAMPLINGALLOCATION

Pilot studies of the bus-route creel survey method were conducted in t he South Australian marine scalefish fishery to evaluate characteristi cs 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 o r between mornings and afternoons, although the power of these analyse s was low. Afternoon surveys yielded significantly greater number of i nterviews than morning surveys with relative sample sizes of 3.5-16.2% of the estimated parties fishing on the sampling day. Non-uniform pro bability sampling of mornings and afternoons suggested that a sample s ize of around 10% of fishing parties could be achieved. Optimal sampli ng allocation was then used to estimate the precision of effort, harve st per unit effort and harvest estimates for Sillaginodes punctata. Re lative precision levels of 10% or less could be achieved for each vari able with sampling frequencies of 50-60 days per spatial stratum. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.