Table 2.

Region-wide percentage of recreational fishing effort occurring “Inshore/from shore” (within bays, estuaries, sounds, or along the shoreline), in “Coastal waters” (<3 nautical miles from shore, except for west Florida and Texas which are <10 nautical miles from shore), and “Offshore” (either 3–200 nautical miles from shore or 10–200 nautical miles for west Florida and Texas)

Fishing Location	Mean Effort (%)	Max. Effort (%)	Min. Effort (%)
Inshore/from shore	85.94	87.98	83.65
Coastal waters (0–3 or 0–10 NM)	8.03	9.81	7.10
Offshore (3–200 or 10–200 NM)	6.02	7.19	4.30

To compute bycatch rates and estimate total bycatch we summed effort from each state across each of these subregions. The mean for the entire period and the maximum/minimum values for any given year (1996–2017) show that effort is heavily weighted to nearshore waters.