Alaska Commercial fishermen will soon be able to opt for electronic monitoring instead of trying to squeeze a NOAA Fisheries observer on in their small craft.
In 2018, NOAA Fisheries is moving it’s North Pacific Observer Program away from human observers to an Electronic Monitoring data collection system which uses cameras and associated sensors to passively record and monitor fishing activities.
Information collected by observers while aboard commercial fishing vessels is crucial to sustainable management of Alaska’s multi-billion dollar fishing industry.
The EM systems effectively identify almost all species or species groupings required for management and also collect catch and bycatch data from vessels while fishing.
Chris Rilling Director of the Fisheries Monitoring and Analysis Division of the Alaska Fisheries Science Center:”We do it as a win-win we will continue to collect information that we need to manage these fisheries, and the fishermen will have the option of having a video camera system on board as opposed to carrying an observer.”
Voluntary participation in new EM technology program will only be available to hook-and-line and pot gear vessels in the “partial coverage category” of the observer program, in which the agency places observers on randomly selected vessels.
Full coverage vessels have separate requirements for video monitoring systems for compliance monitoring purposes only, not catch estimation.
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