Abstract
The objective of the internship project is to assist in obtaining information on three fisheries (coastal, highly migratory species, and shrimp) along the eastern Florida coast through surveys. The goal is to only survey crews that fish in federal fisheries such as shrimp, snapper/grouper, tuna, swordfish, and king mackerel. A previous survey completed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) interviewed 400 fishermen to observe the crews’ perspectives on fishery management within the Northeast region (Henry & Olson, 2014). Similar to that survey, the aim is to better understand how fishing regulations and management is affecting the crews of commercial fishing vessels in the southeast fisheries region. The work completed during the internship will be added to a larger survey of coastal communities along the Atlantic coast of states within the southeast region, as well as a comparison to data collected in the Florida Keys and gulf coast of Florida from previous surveys. After the collection of the surveys, traditional fisheries data sets, such as landings, trips, price per pound, and estimate total values, were requested from the Florida Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC). A comparison of the survey data, the traditional data sets, and the qualitative notes taken during the surveys and underlined several areas that lacked attention from traditional data. Based upon the observations of differences and deficiencies, a multidimensional framework was proposed that could be used to guide a cooperative interdisciplinary effort to create a more representative data set for the stakeholder group of hired commercial fishermen.