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Many ecosystems continue to experience rapid transformations due to processes like land use change and resource extraction. A systems approach to maintaining natural resources focuses on how interactions and feedbacks among components of complex social-ecological systems generate social and ecological outcomes. In recreational fisheries, residential shoreline development and fish stocking are two widespread human behaviors that influence fisheries, yet emergent social-ecological outcomes from these potentially interacting behaviors remain under explored. We applied a social-ecological systems framework using a simulation model and empirical data to determine whether lakeshore development is likely to promote stocking through its adverse effects on coarse woody habitat and thereby also on survival of juvenile and adult fish. We demonstrate that high lakeshore development is likely to generate dependency of the ecosystem on the social system, in the form of stocking. Further, lakeshore development can interact with social-ecological processes to create deficits for state-level governments, which threatens the ability to fund further ecosystem subsidies. Our results highlight the value of a social-ecological framework for maintaining ecosystem services like recreational fisheries., (© 2016 by the Ecological Society of America.)

Catch‐and‐release (C&R) angling is often used to maintain high catch rates but fish vulnerability to capture may decrease following hooking, thereby decreasing angler catch per unit effort (CPUE) (hyperdepletion). To determine if fish post‐capture response affected recapture probability and population‐level CPUE, individual capture histories of Largemouth Bass in two lakes were compared before and after doubling angling effort in a Before‐After Control‐Impact (BACI) analysis. Previous capture and day‐of‐season both affected recapture probability. Counteracting effects of previous capture and reduced late‐season catch rates caused no hyperdepletion of angler CPUE. Our results highlight the complexity of fish behavioral responses to angling and suggest that hyperdepletion of angling catch rates may not be an issue in C&R fisheries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recreational fisheries are culturally and economically important around the world. Recent research emphasizes that understanding and managing these systems requires a social–ecological perspective. We systematically reviewed quantitative social–ecological models of marine and freshwater recreational fisheries to summarize their conceptualization of social, ecological, and social–ecological dynamics and identify research frontiers. From a candidate set of 626 studies published between 1975 and 2018, 49 met criteria for inclusion in our review. These studies, though diverse in terms of focal species and processes considered, were geographically limited to a few locations and ignored large regions of the globe where recreational fishing is important. There were also important gaps in the social and ecological processes that were included in published models. Reflecting on these patterns in the context of previous conceptual frameworks, we define five key frontiers for future work: 1) exploring the implications of social and behavioural processes like heuristics, social norms, and information sharing for angler decisions and fishery dynamics; 2) modelling governance with more realistic complexity; 3) incorporating ideas from resilience thinking and complex adaptive systems, including slow variables, destabilizing feedbacks, surprises and diversity; 4) considering key ideas in fisheries systems, including spatial and temporal effort dynamics, catch hyperstability, and stocking; and 5) thinking synthetically about the models that we use to describe social–ecological dynamics in recreational fisheries, via explicit comparisons and formal integration with data. Exploration of these frontiers, while remembering the distinction between model complexity and model usefulness, will improve our ability to understand and sustain recreational fisheries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Local users may invest in managing common pool resources, thereby promoting social and ecological resilience. Institutional or economic limits on access are regarded as essential preconditions for incentivizing local investments, but we show that investment incentives can exist even under open access. We modeled a recreational harvest fishery in which local or centralized managers invest in fish stocking to maximize social welfare. Although classic open access dissipation of rents occurs at equilibrium, the sluggish response of fishing effort to changing conditions allows welfare to accrue in transition to equilibrium. This transient welfare creates persistent incentives to invest. Empirical observations showed that stocking by local collective action groups occurred at rates similar to model-predicted optima, while centralized stocking occurred at rates greater than predicted optima. Our results emphasize the potential benefits of local involvement in managing the commons, even under conditions that were previously thought to preclude effective collective action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In commercial and recreational fisheries, catch rate is often assumed to be proportional to stock size and is used by managers and fishers as an indicator of fishery sustainability. If catch rate is proportional to stock size, it can signal a decline of stocks and managers can impose restrictive harvest policies or recreational anglers can move to a new system and allow the over-exploited system to rebound. A growing literature has documented catch rates remaining high even as fish stocks decline (i.e., hyperstability of catch rates) leading to delayed management intervention and overexploitation. Although recent evidence has indicated the presence of hyperstability of catch rates in recreational fisheries, whether hyperstability differs across species or system types remains unknown. To investigate whether catch rate hyperstability varies amongst species or systems, we first tested whether electrofishing catch per unit effort (efCPUE) was an appropriate proxy for true abundance. We then compared the relationship between angler catch rate and fish abundance for common freshwater sport fishes across gradients of habitat availability. We found significant differences in the strength of hyperstability amongst species. We did not identify a consistent influence of habitat on hyperstability of catch rates. Angler preferences and behavior may explain some of the variance in non-proportional catch rates. Future research investigating angler behavior, population size structure, and population dynamics in these systems may identify key interactions that create differences in vulnerability to population collapse. • Electrofishing catch rates are good proxies of fish abundance. • Angler catch rates are not proportional to abundance for several sport fish. • Species differences matter in the degree of vulnerability to catch-rate hyperstability. • Habitat did not appear to influence catch-rate hyperstability. • Managers may need to consider variation in the magnitude of hyperstability amongst fisheries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Quantifying fishing effort is important for recreational fisheries management. • Typical creel methods can be cost-prohibitive when surveying lake-rich landscapes. • Combining multiple sources of spatially extensive data produced accurate estimates. • Model-based methods of estimation can quantify landscape-scale fishing effort. Measuring fishing effort is one important element for effective management of recreational fisheries. Traditional intensive angler intercept survey methods collect many observations on a few water bodies per year to produce highly accurate estimates of fishing effort. However, scaling up this approach to understand landscapes with many systems, such as lake districts, is problematic. In these situations, spatially extensive sampling might be preferable to the traditional intensive sampling method. Here we validate a model-based approach that uses a smaller number of observations collected using multiple methods from many fishing sites to estimate total fishing effort across a fisheries landscape. We distributed on-site and aerial observations of fishing effort across 44 lakes in Vilas County, Wisconsin and then used generalized linear mixed models (GLMMs) to account for seasonal and daily trends as well as lake-specific differences in mean fishing effort. Estimates of total summer fishing effort predicted by GLMMs were on average within 11 % of those produced by traditional mean expansion. These estimates required less sampling effort per lake and can be produced for many more lakes per year. In spite of the higher uncertainty associated with model-based estimates from fewer observations, the improvements associated with the addition of only three aerial observations per lake highlighted the potential for improved precision with relatively few additional observations. Thus, the combination of GLMMs and extensive data collection from multiple sources could be used to estimate fishing effort in regions where intensive data collection for all fishing sites is infeasible, such as lake-rich landscapes. By using these methods of extensive data collection and model-based analysis, managers can produce frequently updated assessments of system states, which are important in developing proactive and dynamic management policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]