Annual Cost Survey

The Northeast Fisheries Science Center's Social Science Branch (SSB) is conducting a survey of participants in the commercial fishing industry in the New England and the Mid-Atlantic states. The survey is being administered to a randomly selected sample of approximately 1,600 commercial fishing vessel owners.

The fishing industry has been saying for some time now that fisheries managers need to give greater consideration to social and economic factors when forming and evaluating alternative fisheries management policies. While some of this information has been gathered in various ways, it was usually collected for one fishery at a time, was limited to a specific time period, and was often not available when regulatory changes were being debated. In order to respond to industry calls for greater consideration of social and economic factors, such information must be collected consistently and comprehensively.

The analysis of economic information, collected systematically over the long term, will help managers 1) understand the economic impacts of proposed fishery management regulations, and 2) choose measures that generate the greatest net economic benefits. Also, such information is likely to reveal where, how, and why some measures will have differential impacts on different sectors of the industry, different ports and/or different groups of fishermen and fishing communities.

This new survey effort is an extension of a cost survey conducted in 2006, 2007 and 2008. Data were collected via a voluntary mail survey associated with the federal fishing permit renewal application. Each year, approximately 2,700 surveys were sent to the universe of active vessels with a Northeast federal permit. The response rate for 2006 was around 22% and declined further in the subsequent years. The SSB has since discontinued the survey due to the low response rate. The new survey has been significantly improved.

We mailed survey packets to a sample of 1704 vessel owners in the Northeast, based on gear type and vessel size.All mailings have been completed. Callbacks are being undertaken to fill in missing information and verify unclear responses in the submitted surveys.

441 surveys were completed and submitted as of December 10, 2012.

Thanks to everyone who has responded to date!

We anticipate having preliminary results available by early February 2013.

Want to know more about our Fishing Vessel Cost Survey? If you are interested in seeing what information we asked about in our fishing vessel cost survey, you can click to see the English, Portuguese and Spanish versions of the survey. Please note that our sample of fishermen for this study was designed to include vessel owners across different gear types and vessel sizes, with a total of 1700 fishermen receiving survey packets. If you are in our sample of fishermen, a pre-notification letter was mailed to you on August 7, 2012, which included instructions for how to request a survey packet in Portuguese or Spanish. Survey packets written in English will be mailed out on August 10, 2012. Survey packets for fishermen that request the survey packet in Portuguese or Spanish will be mailed shortly after.

SURVEYS:

• English Version
• Portuguese Version
• Spanish Version