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Recreational Boat Traffic Surveys Of Sarasota County, Florida. Part 1: Fixed Point Surveys And Data Review. Final Report
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2006
[PDF-5.16 MB]
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Description:Assessments of recreational boating activity and boater compliance have been identified as important tools for both waterway management and manatee protection (USFWS, 2001). In spite of this, information regarding boating activity has been lacking during the development process of many county-wide manatee protection plans. Counties typically rely upon the numbers of registered vessels, and the quantity and distribution of boat facilities (marinas, boat ramps, etc) in order to characterize boat use. Spatial and temporal patterns of recreational boating use, however, are frequently unavailable. Along with human pressure on Florida's natural system comes increasing recreational pressure; primarily more boats and increased access to waterways (Gorzelany, 2003). As a result, the evaluation of levels of human activity on Florida waterways is becoming increasingly important. Recent studies of recreational boating activity and boater compliance (Gorzelany, 1996, 1998, 2000; Morris, 1994; Shapiro, 2001; Tyson and Combs, 1999) have provided valuable information that has lead to improved management of Florida waterways. In 1989, the Florida Governor and Cabinet directed twelve counties with ecologically significant manatee populations to develop a comprehensive Manatee Protection Plan (MPP). Due in part to well-documented manatee use (Patton, 1986; Nabor and Patton, 1988), Sarasota County voluntarily joined the twelve original counties in 1990. The Sarasota County MPP was adopted by the Sarasota County Commission in 2003. While the MPP includes detailed information on registered vessels, boat facilities, traffic sheds, signage inventories, bathymetry data, boating accident statistics, and moorings within the County, the document lacked information regarding on-water vessel boat use and boat traffic patterns. This omission was discussed during the MPP review process, and while the Sarasota County MPP was determined to meet all requirements, a recommendation was also included to design and implement a recreational vessel traffic study in order to supplement the information provided in the MPP. This report discusses the results of a boat traffic study conducted in Sarasota County during 2005, and deals specifically with observational data collected from a series of land-based survey sites. In addition, a comparison with boat data collected during 1995 (Gorzelany, 1996), was conducted in order to identify and evaluate changes in boat traffic patterns which may have occurred over the past decade. The second portion of this study, a year-long aerial survey project examining the spatial distribution of boat traffic in Sarasota County will be discussed in a separate report.
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Sea Grant Document Number:FLSGP-S-06-002
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Rights Information:Public Domain
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