NOAA has announced a new statistical process that jumpstarts a long-awaited update of how recreational catches are counted. That means, NOAA is looking differently at the numbers collected from various surveys to tell us — for instance — how many red snapper were caught by Gulf of Mexico anglers last year. Calling that revised calculation method a more accurate gauge of angling success, NOAA published side-by-side comparisons of catch rates going back to 2004, tallied under the old and new methods. Some of the numbers go up, some go down, and some stay about the same.
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