B1109
Title: Modeling climatic and temporal influences on powerboat launches with relevance to recreational fisheries
Authors: Ebenezer Afrifa-Yamoah - Edith Cowan University (Australia) [presenting]
Abstract: Digital camera monitoring data on recreational boating activity are often manually interpreted, and the reading cost can be expensive for multiple sites. Typically, this scheme is used along with other periodic boat-based surveys, and it is common practice that camera data between survey periods are not read, creating significant gaps in the time series. We predicted boating behaviour during these periods of non-observation using historical data and secondary variables to complete the time series data. Predictive models, built in a Bayesian regression modelling framework, were formulated to determine the temporal distribution of daily boating traffic at two ramps in Western Australia based on climatic variables (including temperature, humidity, wind speed and gust, sea level pressure and wind direction) and temporal classifications (including months, and day type). Constructed and reconstructed data generally aligned well with the observed data, with some temporal biases at the bulk and upper tail of the distributions. The 95\% credible intervals of the reconstructed periods adequately captured the observed data at both locations. Data for the constructed periods depicted the general trends for the observed periods. Our results provide useful insights into using environmental factors to predict boating activity to fill in the gaps between survey years. This could assist in the ongoing monitoring and sustainable management of recreational fisheries.
