The Sea Angling Diary Project has two components:
1. A nationwide face-to-face survey to estimate sea angling participation and effort, using questions added to the Watersports Participation Survey each year;
2. A ‘diary panel’ survey involving the completion of monthly diaries, over a year, in a mobile app and online tool by those who agree to take part, collecting information about:

  • Fishing sessions;
  • Methods, platforms, duration and whether or not they are targeting a species;
  • Catches including kept and released fish (including lengths);
  • Expenditure;
  • Social impacts.

Estimates of recreational sea angling catches and trip expenditure from the diary panel are used to derive estimates for the whole population of sea anglers, based on estimates of the total nationwide numbers of sea anglers from the Watersports Participation Survey. The different surveys will be broken down by region, demographic characteristics and frequency of angling to correct for any biases caused by the diary panel not being fully representative of the total population of sea anglers. There are many potential ways of collecting information on recreational sea angling, all of which have different strengths. This design has been selected to give a reasonable level of precision and minimise bias using experience from previous studies, and used routinely by other scientists in Europe, USA, Australia and New Zealand. Overall, this design was thought to provide the best value for money and give reasonable estimates.