Contact Sea Angling Diary

The Sea Angling Diary project has been running since 2016. In 2016 and 2017 it was called Sea Angling 2016 and Sea Angling 2017 respectively. During 2017 it was renamed Sea Angling Diary project. It will run continue to run each year until contracted otherwise.

Although there is no official steering group for this survey, input is regularly received via meetings with angling and other stakeholders. We work with a wider range of angling stakeholders who support the project including:

• Angling Trust
• Welsh Federation of Sea Anglers / Angling Cymru
• Angling Trades Association
• Association of Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authorities
• Institute of Fisheries Management
• National Mullet Club
• Bass Anglers’ Sportfishing Society
• BritishSeaFishing.co.uk
• Fishing Megastore

Catchwise and the Sea Angling Diary are ran both by Substance. Catchwise is a year project that runs from July 2023 to July 2024 for shore anglers, and October 2023 to October 2024 for charter boats. Catchwise was set up to understand the bias in the Sea Angling Diary Project, and determine the confidence in the data that is produced by the Sea Angling Diary. The outputs for the two projects will be compared in a robust analysis and modelling exercise conducted by Cefas. The results of Catchwise will inform how the Sea Angling Diary project data is used in the future.
To find out more about Catchwise, click here.

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.