Stakeholder insights corroborate habitat and reef fish abundance on the southeastern US Atlantic continental shelf

Logistics and finances often limit collecting fishery-independent survey data over large regions where marine resources are managed and assessed. We interviewed commercial and recreational stakeholders in the southeastern US Atlantic continental shelf reef fishery to determine whether their spatial categorizations of spatially localized natural reef (hardbottom) habitat and red snapper Lutjanus campechanus catch were correlated to spatial estimates obtained from fishery-independent habitat syntheses and models of catch data. Fishery-independent estimates of habitat abundance and red snapper catch were positively related to stakeholder scores for these metrics. Locations of high red snapper abundance identified from model fitting to fishery-independent catch data also were generally identified by stakeholders as locations of high catch. Grid cells for which we obtained data from multiple stakeholders displayed agreement for categorizations of habitat and fish catch, suggesting that broad questions about spatial dynamics of marine resources can be answered consistently among stakeholders with experience in the fishery. Our results demonstrate that stakeholder insights could be used to either corroborate fishery-independent survey data or provide information on the amounts and distribution of demersal marine resources where surveys do not occur. These findings have important implications for large and difficult-to-sample regions with exploited marine resources or emerging management issues.