The Northeast groundfishery, the USA’s oldest commercial fishery, will be the oldest one to bring an unprecedented near real-time data collection effort online. This new technology will allow the oldest fishery to keep clear picture of how fishermen will be better able to plan their fishing effort to land their limit of fish and not exceed it.
During fishery random exchange of information take place between fishing operations and NOAA. Rapid and accurate data transfer is particularly critical to tracking the multiple catch limits that will govern groundfishing. To handle it, NOAA and the industry have worked closely together since last April to develop and upgrade software and hardware, train people to use the systems, create quality control teams, and develop the reports critical to monitoring effort.
Patricia Kurkul, northeast regional administrator for NOAA’s Fisheries Service, said that NOAA and the industry have invested in this to make it easier for fishermen to report and review the accuracy of catch and other required information, and to make sure the agency is working with the best and most current data possible as the fishery occurs.
One key innovation is added capability to account not only for the number of days a fishing vessel uses, but also how close a vessel is to its catch limits. She told that a complementary tool, developed nationally by NOAA, has been customised for the Northeast groundfishery and will help to better match reports on a particular fishing trip generated by different sources.
