The purpose of this rulemaking is to create a Recreational Blue Crab Trap Registration system within the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission’s (Commission) blue crab regulations (68B-45, Florida Administrative Code), which would improve estimates of participation and fishing effort in the recreational blue crab trap fishery, and would improve recreational harvest data collection by identifying the population of recreational harvesters targeting blue crabs with traps. The effect of this rulemaking will be to require certain recreational harvesters to report their intention to harvest or attempt to harvest blue crabs using traps in Florida waters by completing the Recreational Blue Crab Trap Registration each year. Additionally, this rulemaking will require recreational harvesters to permanently mark each trap used to target blue crabs in Florida waters with unique recreational blue crab trap identification numbers assigned by the Commission.