Implications for Monitoring

  Monitoring traffic for an entire bay is more problematic than for a trafficshed, since, unlike a trafficshed, a significant proportion of the traffic is internal (its origin and destination are within the bay). This simulation suggests that about half of the boats embarking from within the bay will have their destination somewhere outside the bay. Though this aspect of boat traffic was not explicitly considered in this study, it is probable that a similar proportion of boats outside the bay make their destinations somewhere inside the bay. If one successfully monitors all boats passing through the five entry and exit points (as described in figure 3.1), the information gathered accounts for about half of the total traffic for the bay. Some observation method for boats inside the bay itself is needed to account for traffic local traffic.

Of the destinations inside the bay, half of those listed on weekends in the winter were specific locations where all arriving boats can be observed simultaneously (the Quay, Moores Restaurant, Holiday Inn, etc.), though the combined total of the boats arriving at these locations is relatively small. Any one of these locations will rarely account for more than 5% of the total boat traffic for Sarasota Bay, and the combined total of boats arriving to these locations is typically 15% of the total boat traffic on a given day. However, for many of these locations (Moores Restaurant, Cortez, Marina Jacks, or Jewfish Key, for example), virtually all of the boats arriving will come from the ICW. Many more locations (the Quay, Ringling Complex, the Holiday Inn) are only accessible by a marked channel that is connected to the ICW. If one is primarily interested in counting the number and types of boats operating in the bay, that goal could be achieved for these locations by monitoring the channels for appropriate lengths of time.

The remaining portion (about $\frac{1}{3}$) of the traffic originates from somewhere inside the bay and goes to a destination that cannot be defined by a specific point. This includes sailboats that are simply tacking back and forth in the bay, or racing on a course defined by buoys, and speedboats that may or may not be towing a waterskiier. This category of boater has no specific destination in mind, and considers the trip to be an objective in itself. This population will typically follow an established path simply to get to some area of relatively unrestricted operation. As the destination is secondary, it is far from certain that they would choose the most efficient path to a destination- in fact, the opposite may be true in many cases. For these reasons, the methods used in simulating boat traffic in this study may not be appropriate for describing the behavior of this segment of the population.

Another segment is the fishing boat population, whose destinations are the ``fishing flats,'' or the shallow seagrass areas at the north end of the bay. Respondents were typically vague about specific locations they would use in this area: it is tempting to conclude that they did not wish to ``give away'' their better fishing spots, but it is more likely that their specific destinations changed from day to day depending on where the fishing seemed to be the best.

In both of these areas, from a management perspective it is relatively unimportant where the boaters' specific destinations may lie. The important question would be centered around types and intensities of boat activities, and the densities at which these activities were taking place in the bay (Ashton, 1971). It is conceivable that boating activities would be monitored to see if activities are taking place at sustainable levels. Previous monitoring studies refer to boat activities in terms of impacts, though often the term is used without being defined (for example, Jaakson (1988)).

Monitoring of these open areas would require frequent counts of boats within reasonably defined areas of interest. How these functional regions are defined would depend largely on management goals. If areas of functional homogeneity can be identified (for example, if a section of open bay was considered to be of equal importance to various boat types), one could base a monitoring strategy on counting all the boats and activities in this area at appropriate intervals. If it is not practical to monitor the entire area, one could monitor a section and extrapolate the results onto the rest of the bay.