Counting Fish By Telephone and Postcard
The economy can’t be so bad that fish counters are now relying on telephone surveys and snail mail to keep track of which populations are most at risk of being overfished.
That can’t be true.
But apparently it’s so. Using a system first put in place in the 1980s, the National Marine Fisheries Service – an agency of NOAA — still relies heavily on telephone calls to individual homes of sports fishermen to help them count fish populations. But according even to local fishermen, not highly trained scientists, the system hasn’t always been that accurate and has too often led to the wrong areas being placed off limits for both recreational and commercial fishing due to fishy numbers.
Now, in North Carolina, the Fisheries Service thinks it’s come up with a more fool-proof plan to improve on the so-called “Coastal Household Telephone Survey” for counting: The U.S. Postal Service!
According to one researcher involved in the counting, the returns by mail are netting more complete data. “It’s kind of like back to the future,” Lynne Stokes told Physorg.com. He’s a professor in the Department of Statistical Science at SMU in Dallas. “The data was better and we got a higher response.”
Says who?
(For the rest of my dispatch, go to takepart.com)
Lynne Stokes excellent professor, versed in his subject well