Source ledger & methodology

The source ladder

1. Controlling official sources — NOAA Fisheries, NWS, NHC, USCG, Federal Register, eCFR, state marine agencies.
2. Direct observations — operator-owned charter, headboat, marina, and association reports.
3. Regional synthesis — established fishing publications that identify the contributing captains or shops.
4. Discovery only — social posts, forums, and search results can point us toward a source but do not become facts by themselves.

Report pipeline

Collectors prefer RSS, Atom, and public APIs. Each source has an owner, URL, geographic default, cadence, and kill switch. We preserve the original date and link, extract only supported species/method/location facts, and store a short attributed summary. HTML adapters require a robots/terms review and conservative request schedule.

Confidence is provenance—not a promise

Direct means an operator published the report. Regional means an editor compiled multiple named reports. Neither guarantees future catch. Charter reports are useful first-hand signals and marketing at the same time; trend views should expose source count and sample size.

Freshness and outages

Every public record carries observed and fetched times. Failed or stale feeds display as unavailable/stale. We never translate missing data into “no fish.” Historical report facts are retained for seasonal comparisons; raw source material is kept only as long as operationally necessary.

Corrections and rights

We summarize and link. We do not copy full reports or operator photos without permission. Source owners can request a correction, attribution change, or removal at contact@saltwaternews.com. See our corrections policy.