The 20-year Queensland’s fisheries citizen science program and its potential to support fisheries monitoring - The Keen Angler Program

Abstract

Species biological and harvest data play a vital role in fisheries monitoring and understanding of the status of fish populations. This includes those dominated by recreational harvest. However, reporting in recreational fisheries is rarely compulsory, limiting the availability of catch or biological data, such as fish age and length, for use in stock assessments. Citizen science programs can be a viable way to collect large and diverse data on harvested fish species. Citizen science programs such as Queensland’s (north-eastern Australian state) Department of Primary Industries’ Keen Angler Program (KAP) may address this critical data gap. KAP has been in operation since 2005, and here, we describe for the first time KAP and the data collected in the program so far. In particular, we describe the number of donations and samples, the composition of samples, and patterns of donations (i.e., co-occurrence of donated species) collected through KAP over the past 20 years. Over the past 20 years, KAP has received over 55,000 fish from more than 9000 donations, with the south of Queensland having higher donation numbers compared to the north. Most of the fish donated were ‘Inshore and Estuarine’ species. However, there have been increasing samples of ‘Coral reef’ species, after their addition to the program in 2017. Recreational fishers also tended to supply multiple species in a single donation, providing insights into the targeting strategy of fishers and their use of marine habitats. The capacity to retain participants and continually contribute data could be a significant factor in the sustainability of the program. The high volume and consistent data of KAP could contribute to supporting fisheries monitoring and management.