Our Foundation supports innovative solutions to conservation challenges and our recent collaboration with FWC and Bass Pro Shops is a perfect example. With funding support from Bass Pro Shops & Cabela’s Outdoor Fund, our Foundation supported spawning aggregation research of snapper near Western Dry Rocks, a major coral reef system near Key West. The FWC study worked to enhance our understanding and preservation of snapper populations but ran into a slight snag with research equipment.
The Challenge
Acoustic tagging is a crucial method for tracking fish movements and understanding their behavior. However, these tags are expensive and must be recovered from the fish to be reused. This recovery process can be tricky as it relies on anglers returning the tags, which hasn’t always been a priority.
The Solution: Incentivizing Returns
To tackle this challenge, we teamed up with Bass Pro Shops to fund a unique reward program. We provided gift cards as incentives for anglers who return the acoustic tags. And guess what? It’s working wonders!
The Results
Our program’s initial batch of ten $100 gift cards quickly made an impact:
- $700 spent on rewards has resulted in $3,200 worth of equipment being returned in functional condition and redeployed.
- The number of acoustic tags we’re deploying has increased from 30 to 37, a 23% boost!
- Successful tag recoveries have soared from 62% to 100%.
Before the introduction of the rewards, only about half of anglers returned the tags they found. Now, with the added incentive, every tag is making its way back to researchers, allowing for more comprehensive data collection and analysis.
This program’s success wouldn’t be possible without the support from our partners, anglers, and donors, thank you!
