Keno Ferter, a master student in Fisheries Biology and Management at the University of Bergen, is conducting a supplementary study for the ongoing project as a part of his master thesis.
To date, the touristy fishing project conducted by IMR has focused on the documentation of fishing effort and catches taken by fishers staying at registered businesses that rents room and boats to tourist fishers. The informal sector was left out for cost reasons. Since there is neither a complete registry of businesses offering housing for angling tourist available, nor fishing licenses which could be used to track foreign angling tourists in Norway, it is difficult to conduct a cost-effective survey of the entire tourist fishery, and random telephone interview surveys are precluded for tourists since they are not listed in the Norwegian phone directory. Conducting a cost effective survey is further complicated by the very long coastline of Norway, extending over 25,000, and the free access to the sea.
In order to get some information on the informal angling tourism sector, an online survey in two German angling forums will be conducted. These forums mostly consist of German anglers travelling to Norway in order to fish. The aim of the survey is to find out the ratio of angling tourists that stay in registered businesses and those that stay in the informal sector, and to get some valid catch and effort information about the informal sector.
Please follow the link in the menu to the left to complete the questionnaire.
