Abstract
Recreational fishing is a popular pastime and multibillion dollar industry in Australia, playing a key economic role, especially in regional areas. In the State of Victoria, Port Phillip Bay (PPB), bordered by Melbourne and its suburbs, is the largest of the State’s marine recreational fisheries. At present, little is known about the spatial and temporal dimensions of angler travel from origins to destinations, and the applicability of such spatial knowledge in fisheries management. To address this lack of information we assessed spatiotemporal dynamics and patterns in fishing trips, based upon travel distances on land and water, to acquire insight into the spatial ranges over which anglers residing in various locations travel to fishing destinations in the environs of PPB. Data for each angler per fishing trip, from 6,035 boat-based creel surveys, collected at 20 boat ramps in PPB during a 10-year period from 2010 to 2019, were analyzed by applying geospatial modeling. Differences were observed in both land and water travel distance by region and popular target species, with anglers who launched from Bellarine region traveling further on land, and those who targeted snapper traveling further on water. It was also evident that most anglers resided within close proximity of PPB, often less than 50 km, although some anglers traveled long distances across the State to access fishing locations, particularly when targeting snapper. This work further highlights the importance of spatially explicit approaches to inform fisheries management by identifying users across different landscape and seascape scales, and out-of-region or State fishing trips, which may especially impact coastal communities and benefit local businesses.
Highlights
Recreational fishing is a popular pastime with profound socio-cultural impacts, and it contributes considerably to the world economy (Cisneros-Montemayor and Sumaila, 2010; Cooke et al, 2018; Hyder et al, 2018; Lewin et al, 2019)
Most anglers fishing in Phillip Bay (PPB) were residents from postcodes within relatively close proximity of PPB within Melbourne, Mornington and Southwest Victorian regions as well as Geelong, Bellarine and Surf Coast Shire (Figure 2)
The amount of time spent fishing in PPB was 4.3 ± 2.0 hours on average per trip (Table 2), but there were a limited number of anglers who reportedly fished for considerably longer periods of Bellarine Melbourne Mornington Overall
Summary
Recreational fishing is a popular pastime with profound socio-cultural impacts, and it contributes considerably to the world economy (Cisneros-Montemayor and Sumaila, 2010; Cooke et al, 2018; Hyder et al, 2018; Lewin et al, 2019). The underpinning operational policy objective is to enable fishing stakeholder needs to be met whilst satisfying community expectations for sustainability and socio-economic benefits, within proximity of urbanized coastal areas that provide easy access to marine resources. This is of particular importance given that in Australia the amount of recreational catch may exceed commercial catch in highly populated coastal areas, or that angling may be the only, or dominant, recreational activity supporting tourism and holiday visitation within less populous areas (McPhee et al, 2002; McPhee, 2017). Recreational fishing is very popular compared to global norms with > 19.5% of the population partaking, which is facilitated by highly efficient implementation of recreational fisheries policies and promotional initiatives (Cooke and Cowx, 2004; McPhee, 2017; Cooke et al, 2018; Lynch et al, 2019)
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