#Introduction
Creel surveys allow fisheries scientists and managers to collect data on catch and harvest, an angler population (including effort expended), and, depending on survey design, biological data on fish populations. Though important methods of collecting data on the user base of the fishery, creel surveys are difficult to implement and, in graduate fisheries programs, creel surveys are paid little attention. As a result, fisheries managers–the first job for many fisheries-program graduates–often inherit old surveys or are told to institute new surveys with little knowledge of how to do so.
Fisheries can cover large spatial extents: large reservoirs, coast-lines, and river systems. A creel survey has to be statistically valid, adaptable to the geographic challenges of the fishery, and cost efficient. Limited budgets can prevent agencies from implementing creel surveys; the AnglerCreelSurveySimulation was designed to help managers explore the type of creel survey that is most appropriate for their fishery, including fisheries with multiple access points, access points that are more popular than others, variation in catch rate, the number of surveyors, and seasonal variation in day-lengths.
The AnglerCreelSurveySimulation package does require
that users know something about their fishery and the human dimensions
of that fishery. A prior knowledge includes mean trip length
for a party (or individual), the mean catch rate of the
The AnglerCreelSurveySimulation package is simple, but
powerful. Four functions provide the means for users to create a
population of anglers, limit the length of the fishing day to any value,
and provide a mean trip length for the population. Ultimately, the user
only needs to know the final function
ConductMultipleSurveys but because I’d rather this
not be a black box of functions, this brief
introduction will be a step-by-step process through the package.
##A walk-through of the package
This tutorial assumes that we have a very simple, small fishery with only one access point that, on any given day, is visited by 100 anglers. The fishing day length for our theoretical fishery is 12 hours (say, from 6 am to 6pm) and all anglers are required to have completed their trip by 6pm. Lastly, the mean trip length is known to be 3.5 hours.
For the purposes of this package, all times are functions of the
fishing day. In other words, if a fishing day length is 12 hours (e.g.,
from 6 am to 6pm) and an angler starts their trip at 2 and
ends at 4 that means that they started their trip at 8 am
and ended at 10 am.
The make_anglers() function builds a population of
anglers:
library(AnglerCreelSurveySimulation)
anglers <- make_anglers(n_anglers = 100, mean_trip_length = 3.5, fishing_day_length = 12)make_anglers() returns a dataframe with
start_time, trip_length, and
departure_time for all anglers.
head(anglers)
#>   start_time trip_length departure_time
#> 1   7.238159    1.325826       8.563985
#> 2   2.953622    2.235586       5.189208
#> 3   7.676914    3.436153      11.113067
#> 4   3.097302    4.638618       7.735920
#> 5   1.284245    3.321098       4.605344
#> 6   7.974742    1.633840       9.608582In the head(anglers) statement, you can see that
starttime, triplength, and
departureTime are all available for each angler. The first
angler started their trip roughly 7.24 hours into the fishing day,
continued to fish for 1.33 hours, and left the access point at 8.56
hours into the fishing day. Angler start times are assigned by the
uniform distribution and trip lengths are assigned by the
gamma distribution. To get true effort of all the anglers
for this angler population, summing trip_length is all
that’s needed: 0.
The distribution of angler trip lengths can be easily visualized:
library(dplyr)
#> 
#> Attaching package: 'dplyr'
#> The following objects are masked from 'package:stats':
#> 
#>     filter, lag
#> The following objects are masked from 'package:base':
#> 
#>     intersect, setdiff, setequal, union
library(ggplot2)
# Histogram overlaid with kernel density curve
anglers %>%
  ggplot(aes(x=trip_length)) + 
  geom_histogram(aes(y=..density..), 
                 binwidth=.1,
                 colour="black", fill="white") +
  geom_density(alpha=.2, fill="#FF6666")Once the population of anglers has been created, the next function to
apply is the get_total_values() function. In
get_total_values(), the user specifies the start time of
the creel surveyor, the end time of the surveyor, and the wait time of
the surveyor. Here is where the user also specifies the sampling
probability of the anglers (in most cases, equal to \(\frac{waitTime}{fishingDayLength}\)) and
the mean catch rate of the fishery. There are a number of a default
settings in the get_total_values() function; see
?get_total_values for a description of how the function
handles NULL values for startTime,
endTime, and waitTime. startTime
and waitTime are the times that the surveyor started and
waited at the access point. totalCatch and
trueEffort are the total (or real) values for
catch and effort. meanLambda is the mean catch rate for all
anglers. Even though we assigned meanCatchRate to
get_total_values(), individual mean catch rates are
simulated by rgamma() with shape equal to
meanCatchRate and rate equal to 1.
For this walk through, we’ll schedule the surveyor to work for a total of eight hours at the sole access point in our fishery:
anglers %>%
  get_total_values(start_time = 0, wait_time = 8, sampling_prob = 8/12, mean_catch_rate = 2.5)
#>   n_observed_trips total_observed_trip_effort n_completed_trips
#> 1               91                   378.9607                61
#>   total_completed_trip_effort total_completed_trip_catch start_time wait_time
#> 1                    275.0163                   670.2935          0         8
#>   total_catch true_effort mean_lambda
#> 1    900.8161    318.3179    2.700503get_total_values() returns a single row data frame with
several columns. The output of get_total_values() is the
catch and effort data observed by the surveyor during their wait at the
access point along with the “true” values for catch and effort.
(Obviously, we can’t simulate biological data but, if an agency’s
protocol directed the surveyor to collect biological data, that could be
analyzed with other R functions.)
In the output from get_total_values(),
n_observed_trips is the number of trips that the surveyor
observed, including anglers that arrived after she started her day and
anglers that were there for the duration of her time at the access
point. total_observed_trip_effort is the effort expended by
those parties; because the observed trips were not complete, she did not
count their catch. n_completed_trips is the number of
anglers that completed their trips while she was onsite,
total_completed_trip_effort is the effort expended by those
anglers, and total_completed_trip_catch is the number of
fish caught by those parties. Catch is both the number of fish harvested
and those caught and released.
Effort and catch are estimated from the Bus Route Estimator:
\[ \widehat{E} = T\sum\limits_{i=1}^n{\frac{1}{w_{i}}}\sum\limits_{j=1}^m{\frac{e_{ij}}{\pi_{j}}} \]
where
and
Catch rate is calculated from the Ratio of Means equation:
\[ \widehat{R_1} = \frac{\sum\limits_{i=1}^n{c_i/n}}{\sum\limits_{i=1}^n{L_i/n}} \]
where
and
* Li is the length of the fishing trip at the tie of
the interview.
For incomplete surveys, Li represents an incomplete trip.
simulate_bus_route() calculates effort and catch based
upon these equations. See ?simulate_bus_route for
references that include a more detailed discussion of these
equations.
simulate_bus_route() calls make_anglers()
and get_total_values() so many of the same arguments we
passed in the previous functions will need to be passed to
simulate_bus_route(). The new argument,
nsites, is the number of sites visited by the surveyor. In
more advanced simulations (see the examples in
?simulate_bus_route), you can pass strings of values for
startTime, waitTime, nsites, and
nanglers to simulate a bus route-type survey rather than
just a single access-point survey.
sim <- simulate_bus_route(start_time = 0, wait_time = 8, n_sites = 1, n_anglers = 100,
                          sampling_prob = 8/12, mean_catch_rate = 2.5, fishing_day_length = 12)
sim
#>      Ehat catch_rate_ROM true_catch true_effort mean_lambda
#> 1 409.936       2.297963   891.6496    346.0502    2.613442The output from simulate_bus_route() is a dataframe with
values for Ehat, catchRateROM (the ratio of
means catch rate), trueCatch, trueEffort, and
meanLambda. Ehat is the estimated total effort
from the Bus Route Estimator above and catchRateROM is
catch rate estimated from the Ratio of Means equation.
trueCatch, trueEffort, and
meanLambda are the same as before. Multiplying
Ehat by catchRateROM gives an estimate of
total catch: 942.0178635.
###Conducting multiple simulations
With information about the fishery, the start and wait times of the
surveyor, the sampling probability, mean catch rate, and fishing day
length, we can run multiple simulations with
conduct_multiple_surveys().
conduct_multiple_surveys() is a wrapper that calls the
other three functions in turn and compiles the values into a data frame
for easy plotting or analysis. The only additional argument needed is
the nsims value which tells the function how many
simulations to conduct. For the sake of this simple simulation, let’s
assume that the creel survey works five days a week for four weeks
(i.e. 20 days):
sim <- conduct_multiple_surveys(n_sims = 20, start_time = 0, wait_time = 8, n_sites = 1,
                                n_anglers = 100, sampling_prob = 8/12, 
                                mean_catch_rate = 2.5, fishing_day_length = 12)
sim
#>        Ehat catch_rate_ROM true_catch true_effort mean_lambda
#> 1  376.6182       2.519242   846.7200    344.3344    2.472871
#> 2  389.6775       2.601564   854.0753    357.5443    2.383879
#> 3  384.5418       2.328529   762.5164    355.8506    2.238003
#> 4  388.2216       2.436591   861.6960    366.4591    2.354099
#> 5  371.1078       2.477710   814.2975    331.1943    2.340942
#> 6  370.7990       2.658424   903.5185    331.8732    2.625328
#> 7  384.1850       2.612345   906.0439    354.0076    2.578438
#> 8  407.0480       2.607874   948.4486    377.0258    2.550014
#> 9  361.4820       2.483589   858.0846    334.9782    2.564525
#> 10 375.5050       2.380012   956.6329    332.0240    2.811077
#> 11 341.9553       2.172521   910.1723    323.4882    2.643072
#> 12 386.8595       2.416742   915.9138    351.6712    2.603038
#> 13 389.1150       2.312806   854.3322    343.8923    2.520057
#> 14 409.8340       2.698748  1017.0248    376.4917    2.739232
#> 15 348.4828       2.288811   826.0451    326.5319    2.552013
#> 16 360.1970       2.405245   688.5132    313.6174    2.265548
#> 17 319.0463       3.075032   889.4199    321.9518    2.715001
#> 18 402.2221       2.758371   920.2525    356.7515    2.559893
#> 19 429.0461       2.642780  1034.2358    371.3453    2.782377
#> 20 400.7477       2.478225   958.3914    353.0512    2.764598With the output from multiple simulations, an analyst can evaluate
how closely the creel survey they’ve designed mirrors reality. A
lm() of estimated catch as a function of
trueCatch can tell us if the survey will over or under
estimate reality:
mod <- 
  sim %>% 
  lm((Ehat * catch_rate_ROM) ~ true_catch, data = .)
summary(mod)
#> 
#> Call:
#> lm(formula = (Ehat * catch_rate_ROM) ~ true_catch, data = .)
#> 
#> Residuals:
#>     Min      1Q  Median      3Q     Max 
#> -231.14  -34.39   18.92   53.95  128.04 
#> 
#> Coefficients:
#>             Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)   
#> (Intercept) 306.7721   210.0432   1.461   0.1614   
#> true_catch    0.7331     0.2361   3.106   0.0061 **
#> ---
#> Signif. codes:  0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1
#> 
#> Residual standard error: 83.31 on 18 degrees of freedom
#> Multiple R-squared:  0.3489, Adjusted R-squared:  0.3127 
#> F-statistic: 9.646 on 1 and 18 DF,  p-value: 0.006101Plotting the data and the model provide a good visual means of evaluating how close our estimates are to reality:
#Create a new vector of the estimated effort multiplied by estimated catch rate
sim <- 
  sim %>%
  mutate(est_catch = Ehat * catch_rate_ROM)
sim %>% 
  ggplot(aes(x = true_catch, y = est_catch)) +
  geom_point() +
  geom_abline(intercept = mod$coefficients[1], slope = mod$coefficients[2], 
              colour = "red", size = 1.01)
#> Warning: Using `size` aesthetic for lines was deprecated in ggplot2 3.4.0.
#> ℹ Please use `linewidth` instead.
#> This warning is displayed once every 8 hours.
#> Call `lifecycle::last_lifecycle_warnings()` to see where this warning was
#> generated.The closer the slope parameter estimate is to 1 and the intercept parameter estimate is to 0, the closer our estimate of catch is to reality.
We can create a model and plot of our effort estimates, too:
mod <- 
  sim %>%
  lm(Ehat ~ true_effort, data = .)
summary(mod)
#> 
#> Call:
#> lm(formula = Ehat ~ true_effort, data = .)
#> 
#> Residuals:
#>     Min      1Q  Median      3Q     Max 
#> -32.311  -7.028  -2.247  10.501  19.691 
#> 
#> Coefficients:
#>             Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)    
#> (Intercept) -26.6792    55.8474  -0.478    0.639    
#> true_effort   1.1742     0.1611   7.289 8.98e-07 ***
#> ---
#> Signif. codes:  0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1
#> 
#> Residual standard error: 13.19 on 18 degrees of freedom
#> Multiple R-squared:  0.7469, Adjusted R-squared:  0.7329 
#> F-statistic: 53.13 on 1 and 18 DF,  p-value: 8.982e-07
#Create a new vector of the estimated effort multiplied by estimated catch rate
sim %>%
  ggplot(aes(x = true_effort, y = Ehat)) +
  geom_point() +
  geom_abline(intercept = mod$coefficients[1], slope = mod$coefficients[2], 
              colour = "red", size = 1.01)If the start and wait time equals 0 and the length of the fishing day, respectively, the creel surveyor can observe all completed trips, though she’d likely be unhappy having to work 12 hours. The inputs have to be adjusted to allow her to arrive at time 0, stay for all 12 hours, and have a probability of 1.0 at catching everyone:
start_time <- 0
wait_time <- 12
sampling_prob <- 1
sim <- conduct_multiple_surveys(n_sims = 20, start_time = start_time, wait_time = wait_time,
                                n_sites = 1, n_anglers = 100, sampling_prob = 1, 
                                mean_catch_rate = 2.5, fishing_day_length = 12)
sim
#>        Ehat catch_rate_ROM true_catch true_effort mean_lambda
#> 1  331.5126       2.258124   748.5965    331.5126    2.226366
#> 2  335.3444       2.284950   766.2451    335.3444    2.418218
#> 3  333.6399       2.478427   826.9022    333.6399    2.440359
#> 4  317.0329       2.325350   737.2123    317.0329    2.357007
#> 5  297.0303       2.117019   628.8189    297.0303    2.143518
#> 6  324.3639       2.299249   745.7935    324.3639    2.378997
#> 7  322.9534       2.628027   848.7302    322.9534    2.683393
#> 8  340.1983       2.882697   980.6887    340.1983    2.686978
#> 9  370.5029       2.368574   877.5637    370.5029    2.436295
#> 10 344.4279       2.440527   840.5856    344.4279    2.305974
#> 11 336.1316       2.317123   778.8581    336.1316    2.203803
#> 12 356.4815       2.628166   936.8928    356.4815    2.489206
#> 13 323.4428       2.317091   749.4464    323.4428    2.336160
#> 14 332.7596       2.510335   835.3380    332.7596    2.552702
#> 15 330.2695       2.576715   851.0104    330.2695    2.616000
#> 16 326.6618       2.331027   761.4574    326.6618    2.240301
#> 17 336.2574       2.279683   766.5603    336.2574    2.311405
#> 18 351.5997       2.561353   900.5711    351.5997    2.507581
#> 19 351.4495       2.212520   777.5890    351.4495    2.193988
#> 20 319.4902       2.598769   830.2811    319.4902    2.577867#> Warning in summary.lm(mod): essentially perfect fit: summary may be unreliable
#> 
#> Call:
#> lm(formula = Ehat ~ true_effort, data = .)
#> 
#> Residuals:
#>        Min         1Q     Median         3Q        Max 
#> -4.668e-13 -2.000e-15  2.544e-14  4.251e-14  8.211e-14 
#> 
#> Coefficients:
#>               Estimate Std. Error    t value Pr(>|t|)    
#> (Intercept) -4.576e-13  5.617e-13 -8.150e-01    0.426    
#> true_effort  1.000e+00  1.679e-15  5.954e+14   <2e-16 ***
#> ---
#> Signif. codes:  0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1
#> 
#> Residual standard error: 1.173e-13 on 18 degrees of freedom
#> Multiple R-squared:      1,  Adjusted R-squared:      1 
#> F-statistic: 3.545e+29 on 1 and 18 DF,  p-value: < 2.2e-16If our hypothetical fishery suddenly gained another access point and the original 100 anglers were split between the two access points equally, what kind of information would a creel survey capture? We could ask our surveyor to split her eight-hour work day between both access points, but she’ll have to drive for 0.5 hours to get from one to another. Of course, that 0.5 hour of drive time will be a part of her work day so she’ll effectively have 7.5 hours to spend at access points counting anglers and collecting data.
start_time <- c(0, 4.5)
wait_time <- c(4, 3.5)
n_sites = 2
n_anglers <- c(50, 50)
fishing_day_length <- 12
sampling_prob <- sum(wait_time)/fishing_day_length
sim <- conduct_multiple_surveys(n_sims = 20, start_time = start_time, wait_time = wait_time,
                                n_sites = n_sites, n_anglers = n_anglers, 
                                sampling_prob = sampling_prob, mean_catch_rate = 2.5,
                                fishing_day_length = fishing_day_length)
sim
#>        Ehat catch_rate_ROM true_catch true_effort mean_lambda
#> 1  492.8639       1.722646   715.5206    329.7062    2.294514
#> 2  528.2219       2.519027   800.9620    348.0565    2.309510
#> 3  499.8952       2.689286   792.5064    329.5931    2.426154
#> 4  511.1506       2.264724   822.7999    338.4422    2.507654
#> 5  563.1956       2.537964   827.5075    356.8933    2.256187
#> 6  530.4618       2.721845   900.7757    354.8364    2.618954
#> 7  531.3834       2.564764   922.5139    334.9887    2.728519
#> 8  466.0805       2.553252   792.5782    323.5327    2.496906
#> 9  455.9357       2.632786   916.5352    346.0207    2.700286
#> 10 493.1137       2.051125   874.1247    344.6554    2.563315
#> 11 550.3458       2.304537   860.5337    349.7014    2.322299
#> 12 610.5815       2.582332   827.6661    342.4361    2.471889
#> 13 528.3076       2.117544   965.1213    353.1666    2.676699
#> 14 599.3215       2.707865   904.5747    357.7262    2.553898
#> 15 634.6256       1.912975   947.1593    374.6526    2.510612
#> 16 456.4338       2.544216   829.7986    349.9623    2.279834
#> 17 598.5900       2.847658   869.0655    352.3398    2.483211
#> 18 561.8719       2.807523   872.9477    339.3835    2.503308
#> 19 492.0098       3.105794   924.5582    378.8442    2.386399
#> 20 399.4990       1.967737   753.2112    314.8620    2.365910#> 
#> Call:
#> lm(formula = Ehat ~ true_effort, data = .)
#> 
#> Residuals:
#>      Min       1Q   Median       3Q      Max 
#> -100.297  -17.269    1.153   34.035   92.647 
#> 
#> Coefficients:
#>              Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)  
#> (Intercept) -181.5670   261.5396  -0.694   0.4964  
#> true_effort    2.0427     0.7552   2.705   0.0145 *
#> ---
#> Signif. codes:  0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1
#> 
#> Residual standard error: 51.25 on 18 degrees of freedom
#> Multiple R-squared:  0.289,  Adjusted R-squared:  0.2495 
#> F-statistic: 7.317 on 1 and 18 DF,  p-value: 0.0145Ultimately, the creel survey simulation can be as complicated as a creel survey. If a survey requires multiple clerks, several simulations can be coupled together to act as multiple surveyors. To accommodate weekends or holidays (i.e., increased angler pressure), additional simulations with different wait times and more anglers (to simulate higher pressure) can be built into the simulation. For example, if we know that angler pressure is 50% higher at the two access points on weekends, we can hire a second clerk to sample 8 hours a day on the weekends–one day at each access point–and add the weekend data to the weekday data.
#Weekend clerks
start_time_w <- 2
wait_time_w <- 10
n_sites <- 1
n_anglers_w <- 75
fishing_day_length <- 12
sampling_prob <- 8/12
sim_w <- conduct_multiple_surveys(n_sims = 8, start_time = start_time_w, 
                                  wait_time = wait_time_w, n_sites = n_sites, 
                                  n_anglers = n_anglers_w, sampling_prob = sampling_prob,
                                  mean_catch_rate = 2.5, fishing_day_length = fishing_day_length)
sim_w
#>       Ehat catch_rate_ROM true_catch true_effort mean_lambda
#> 1 388.6103       2.667906   692.7806    260.4893    2.623400
#> 2 369.6578       2.410091   595.8737    247.4235    2.453790
#> 3 384.4043       2.516820   644.9844    256.2695    2.540813
#> 4 363.7742       2.508243   608.2893    242.5161    2.558225
#> 5 387.8980       2.826352   732.8723    259.5569    2.788018
#> 6 411.5632       2.243179   616.6394    275.0917    2.221008
#> 7 327.9949       2.410986   529.8627    220.0829    2.331251
#> 8 337.2557       2.694240   614.5451    229.6741    2.578197
#Add the weekday survey and weekend surveys to the same data frame
mon_survey <- 
  sim_w %>%
  bind_rows(sim)
mod <- 
  mon_survey %>% 
  lm(Ehat ~ true_effort, data = .)
summary(mod)
#> 
#> Call:
#> lm(formula = Ehat ~ true_effort, data = .)
#> 
#> Residuals:
#>     Min      1Q  Median      3Q     Max 
#> -87.279  -9.576   0.543  18.509  90.195 
#> 
#> Coefficients:
#>             Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)    
#> (Intercept) -33.6183    56.2029  -0.598    0.555    
#> true_effort   1.6178     0.1747   9.258 1.03e-09 ***
#> ---
#> Signif. codes:  0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1
#> 
#> Residual standard error: 43.06 on 26 degrees of freedom
#> Multiple R-squared:  0.7673, Adjusted R-squared:  0.7583 
#> F-statistic: 85.72 on 1 and 26 DF,  p-value: 1.028e-09Hopefully, this vignette has shown you how to build and simulate your
own creel survey. It’s flexible enough to estimate monthly or seasonal
changes in fishing day length, changes in the mean catch rate, increased
angler pressure on weekends, and any number of access sites, start
times, wait times, and sampling probabilities. The output from
conduct_multiple_surveys() allows the user to estimate
variability in the catch and effort estimates (e.g., relative standard
error) to evaluate the most efficient creel survey for their
fishery.