Fieldwork was conducted in 2009 and 2010 in Walvis Bay, Namibia, using multiple methods to contact captains. The demersal longline and trawl fleet is comprised of corporateowned vessels: at that time 63 demersal trawl vessels and 13 longline vessels were licensed to operate in Namibian waters, but it is not known how many were active (Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources 2011a). Because there was no list of active captains we presented our research plan to the chairperson of the Namibian Hake Association and to the managing directors of companies operating vessels targeting hake who provided initial contact details for captains. We used snowball sampling (Biernacki and Waldorf 1981) to identify additional captains by asking participants to name others they considered experienced in this fishery.