Voluntary Electronic Monitoring

Commercial fishermen already provide a significant amount of information to scientists and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) about where they fish and what they catch. They report the amount of fish they bring to the dock through trip tickets and logbooks. They also notify NMFS when they go fishing and where they fish by carrying vessel monitoring systems (VMS).

Additionally, if randomly selected, fishing vessels must take observers—independent data collectors who record what the fishermen catch, how much they throw overboard, and other important information. However, currently, only a small portion of the fleet is selected to carry observers, meaning observer data can have high levels of uncertainty, and extrapolation of observer data may not accurately reflect reality on the water.

EM can be used to gather more information, more quickly, and from more vessels than can carry observers. EM data can also supplement the information used by NMFS in stock assessments, making fishermen an active part of the scientific process.

• How much bycatch and discards do fishermen have?
• What species do fishermen interact with?
• Where are “hotspots” – areas where fishermen catch high amounts of non-target species or have lots of fish eaten by predators.
• Catch per unit effort trends
• Discard trends
• Depredation levels