BECAA at a glance
What is BECAA?
The Best Catch Assessment (BECAA) is a standardised method for collecting quantitative information from fishers, harvesters, guides, gleaners, divers, and other local knowledge holders. It asks people to recall their best fishing or harvesting experiences, record the number, the year, and the effort, and then uses these responses to reconstruct patterns of catch, encounter rates, size, and change through time.
BECAA was developed as a named approach by Project Seagrass in collaboration with Florida International University, with funding and support from the Bonefish & Tarpon Trust. It was first applied to South Florida bonefish and tarpon, but it can be adapted to many data-poor fisheries.
The core idea
Many fisheries lack long-term monitoring, but they are not knowledge-poor. Fishers often remember the best day, the biggest fish, the fullest net, the heaviest basket, the most productive tide, or the year when fishing clearly changed. BECCA records these memories in a structured way so they can be analysed.
| Number | Year | Effort |
|---|---|---|
| How much was caught, seen, hooked, collected, or harvested? | When did it happen? | How many hours, people, traps, hooks, hauls, or tide cycles were involved? |
Every usable BECAA response needs a number, a year, and an effort measure.
Minimum BEACA questions
Every BECAA should ask about the current-year best catch, the best-ever catch, the first-year or early-career catch, effort, gear, and place.
The current-year question is mandatory. A BECAA should include either the best-ever catch or the first-year catch. Asking all three is strongest.
What can BECAA measure?
| Fishery type | Possible BECAA metric |
|---|---|
| Recreational sight fishing | sightings, shots, eats, hookups, landed fish, maximum size |
| Catch-and-release fisheries | encounters, bites, hookups, size |
| Gleaning | buckets, baskets, bags, individuals, weight |
| Invertebrate harvesting | individuals, sacks, shell size, carapace width, weight |
| Handline fisheries | fish numbers, baskets, boxes, kilograms |
| Trap or pot fisheries | catch per trap per day, individuals, weight |
| Net or seine fisheries | catch per haul, catch per net, baskets, weight |
| Fish fence or weir fisheries | catch per tide cycle, sacks, baskets, weight |
Why effort matters
Catch alone can be misleading. A catch of 20 fish in two hours is very different from 20 fish in ten hours. BECAA therefore standardises catch by effort.
Catch per unit effort = catch amount ÷ effort
| Reported catch | Effort | Standardised value |
|---|---|---|
| 40 fish | 5 hours | 8 fish per hour |
| 3 baskets | 6 hours | 0.5 baskets per hour |
| 18 hookups | 4 hours | 4.5 hookups per hour |
| 8 buckets collected by 4 people | 4 hours | 0.5 buckets per person-hour |
Who should be interviewed?
BECAA works best when the respondent group is diverse. Older and experienced fishers extend the historical baseline. Younger and newer fishers anchor current conditions. Women, gleaners, crew members, guides, part-time fishers, subsistence fishers, commercial fishers, and recreational fishers may all hold different parts of the picture.
BECAA in one sentence
BECAA asks fishers and harvesters about their best catches now and in the past, records each answer as a number, year, and effort measure, and uses many responses together to reconstruct long-term change in data-poor fisheries.