The following dataset contains information from an online survey that was carried out by three different research institutes: the Institute for Environmental Protection and Italy (ISPRA), the IRBIM- CNR, Institute of Biological Resources and Marine Biotechnologies, National Research Council, Ancona, Italy and the Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries, Split, Croatia. The survey was implemented on Google Forms and it was advertised on Facebook groups about recreational spearfishing and sea angling; some questionnaires were also snowballed in the community of recreational spearfishers and sea anglers, on Twitter. Respondents were from Italy, Croatia and Montenegro. The questionnaire was translated in Italian and Croatian. Overall, the questionnaire took approximately 10 minutes to complete.

The dataset comes with guidelines about data collection and data importation on the electronic format.