"Recent concerns have been raised by commercial crab interests relating to the size and character of the recreational fishery for dungeness crab in ocean waters off Oregon. In response to those concerns, in May of 1999 the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife's Ocean Sampling Project began counting the number of ocean caught dungeness crab on charter and private recreational boats. These counts of crab, and the corresponding estimate of total recreational ocean crab catch, were included in the same sampling project that is used to estimate recreational ocean salmon and groundfish landings." (Introduction)