Hi All

Just had the pleasure of taking the phone survey being undertaken by Edith Cowan University (ECU) on behalf of WA Fisheries.  As an engineering type who has a pretty fair understanding of statistics and survey techniques and all I can say is what a waste of time and money.

Really not much more than have you been fishing, boat/shore/both, how many times, where (based on the so-called bioregions), what have you caught (from a list of species) (no interest in number or released or kept), how many times do you think you will go fishing again, do you want to participate in a detail survey log moving forward?  Extremely simplistic and narrow data set.

All they can take from it is have you been fishing and are you going to keep fishing.  If this is the basis for some advisory to Fisheries i cannot fathom how it can be presented as any meaningful or representative way other than a simple how many and where exercise. 

This sadly appears to line up with the poor science we have been seeing used as a basis for managing Fisheries in WA.

I fear there is more bad news to come if you like fishing.