Global responses to the COVID-19 pandemic by recreational anglers: considerations for developing more resilient and sustainable fisheries

Abstract

The global COVID-19 pandemic resulted in many jurisdictions implementing orders restricting the movements of people to inhibit virus transmission, with recreational angling often either not permitted or access to fisheries and/or related infrastructure being prevented. Following the lifting of restrictions, initial angler surveys and licence sales suggested increased participation and effort, and altered angler demographics, but with evidence remaining limited. Here, we overcome this evidence gap by identifying temporal changes in angling interest, licence sales, and angling effort in world regions by comparing data in the 'pre-pandemic' (up to and including 2019); 'acute pandemic' (2020) and 'COVID-acclimated' (2021) periods. We then identified how changes can inform the development of more resilient and sustainable recreational fisheries. Interest in angling (measured here as angling-related internet search term volumes) increased substantially in all regions during 2020. Patterns in licence sales revealed marked increases in some countries during 2020 but not in others. Where licence sales increased, this was rarely sustained in 2021; where there were declines, these related to fewer tourist anglers due to movement restrictions. Data from most countries indicated a younger demographic of people who participated in angling in 2020, including in urban areas, but this was not sustained in 2021. These short-lived changes in recreational angling indicate efforts to retain younger anglers could increase overall participation levels, where efforts can target education in appropriate angling practices and create more urban angling opportunities. These efforts would then provide recreational fisheries with greater resilience to cope with future global crises, including facilitating the ability of people to access angling opportunities during periods of high societal stress.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11160-023-09784-5.

Keywords: Angler demographics; Angling effort; Angling licence; COVID-19 lockdown; Culturomics.

Fig. 1

Time series of relative search volumes for the terms “fishing licence”, “fishing rod”, “fishing reel”, “fishing bait” and “fishing spots”, based on (from left to right) global Google Trends data, as well as data for the United States, United Kingdom and Australia. Full and dashed red lines represent weekly values for 2020 and 2021 respectively, while blue lines and grey shading represent median values and the range of values for the years 2017–2019 respectively. Data were fitted with LOESS smoothing (f = 0.2). Please note the different scales of the y-axes

Fig. 2

Time series of relative search volumes for largemouth bass, northern pike and trout in the United States, common carp and sea bass in the United Kingdom, and Murray cod in Australia, based on Google Trends data. Full and dashed red lines represent weekly values for 2020 and 2021 respectively, while blue lines and grey shading represent median values and the range of values for the years 2017–2019 respectively. Data were fitted with LOESS smoothing (f = 0.2). Please note the different scales of the y-axes

Fig. 3

Weekly catches of all marine and freshwater species by continent reported via the Fishbrain smartphone app from 1 January 2015 to 31 October 2021. The shaded area in each panel identifies the collective pattern of the majority of data points, black points are anomailies that do not follow this pattern (see Section SM2 for details), and the vertical black lines signify when the acute pandemic period commenced

Fig. 4

Angling frequencies in German inland and marine (Baltic Sea and North Sea) waters during the COVID-19 restriction period from March to May 2020 as stated by participants of the telephone survey (weighted data)