Expanded Electronic Oversight Weighed

by Laurie Schreiber

NEWBURYPORT, Mass. – To what extent can electronic monitoring devices replace the eyes of human monitors on commercial fishing trips?

That is the question before the New England Fishery Management Council’s (NEFMC) Electronic Monitoring Working Group, convened this year to explore the potential for expanding and standardizing electronic monitoring programs and technologies.

The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) deploys fishery observers to collect catch and bycatch data from fishing and processing vessels.  Forty-seven different fisheries on all of the nation’s coasts are monitored by observer programs, logging more than 77,000 observer days at sea and collecting data for a range of conservation and management issues. NMFS has been using observers to collect fisheries data since 1972.

Earlier this year, the NEFMC put out a call for fishermen to participate in the northeast’s ad hoc working group, whose members were asked to identify existing barriers, and steps to eliminate impediments concerning the use of electronic monitoring for groundfish sector operations plans, in particular those plans that rely on electronic monitoring as a primary mechanism to achieve their compliance and catch attribution goals.

The group held a conference call, Nov. 12, to continue to figure out barriers and potential solutions.

“We need to come up with standards first, so sectors would know what they’re trying to meet,” said one member of the working group.

Once broad performance standards are determined, there would be room to adapt technologies over time, the group agreed.

The group is expected to recommend timelines for implementing electronic monitoring.

According to information from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), NMFS currently uses a myriad variety of electronic technologies to collect fishery-dependent information from commercial and recreational fisheries. Federal law, in the form of the Magnuson-Stevens Act, requires implementation of annual catch limits to end overfishing, which means industry and managers alike must provide more data.

“Increasing observer coverage requirements, particularly in catch share programs, have high cost burdens that can be problematic for industry-funded programs and difficult for NMFS to fund given current fiscal constraints,” NOAA said. “Increasingly, the use of electronic technology (monitoring and reporting) is perceived as a mechanism to improve the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of data collection.”

The term electronic monitoring is used broadly, indicating all means of collecting, recording, or reporting data both on shore and at sea. Electronic monitoring and electronic reporting technologies are different in terms of design, purpose, and application. But collectively, the technologies range from electronic reporting of trip data by fishermen and catch, landings, and purchase data by dealers or processors, to electronic monitoring equipment such as video cameras that capture information on fishing location and catch with variable data storage options.

“Despite rapid growth of electronic technologies and the myriad of NMFS-sponsored projects to test such technologies, there is still not a set of ER/EM technology standards that can be applied across fisheries,” NOAA said. “The development of minimum requirements for effective monitoring in specific fisheries and standards for the implementation of ER/EM technologies will require collaborative strategic planning that involves all stakeholders.”

Data collection programs track statistics such as participation, effort, catch, landings, discards, biological characteristics of the catch, products, economic value, and socio-cultural impacts.

Primary means of data collection currently include professionally trained observers who are present on fishing trips; coverage may range from a sample of vessel trips to 100 percent of the trips in a specific fishery.

“Observers are the most reliable source of accurate species-specific catch and bycatch information, and they are also the most reliable source of biological data on the catch,” NOAA said.

Shoreside samplers collect landings and biological data. Vessel monitoring systems (VMS) provide information on fishing locations; today, VMS is used to monitor approximately 4,500 vessels in more than 17 federal fisheries nationwide.

Electronic monitoring is also in use as a compliance monitoring tool in some fishing operations. But it is not currently considered as accurate as observer data.

According to NOAA, the decision to invest in electronic reporting and electronic monitoring technologies depends on the fishery, gear type, monitoring and reporting requirements, cost-effectiveness, available funding, and other criteria.

Electronic monitoring technologies, such as the use of video cameras, has great potential for expansion, NOAA said. NMFS has conducted a number of electronic monitoring pilot projects in recent years. But many fisheries lack viable technologies for day-to-day operations, and many fisheries continue to use paper forms for reporting.

What is known, said NOAA, is that video monitoring has proven to be most effective as a compliance tool for monitoring crew activities. However, video monitoring may not be effective for identifying protected or prohibited species. It also may not be more cost-effective that observers.

“Despite numerous past and ongoing video monitoring pilot projects there are currently no operational video monitoring programs in NMFS-managed fisheries where data extracted from video are used for science or management purposes,” NOAA said. “This is due to operational issues including the ability to accurately identify species, ability to estimate weights of discarded fish, and length of time required to obtain and review video and extract all requisite information.”

Addressing the question of barriers to improved electronic monitoring, the working group noted that video cameras have not yet been approved by NMFS as a standard monitoring tool.

In addition, they said, when using a video camera, it’s difficult to distinguish between species that look similar, and to estimate weights. This is a particular difficulty, they said, if the technology is to be used for catch-counting, which helps to determine a sector’s annual catch entitlement. This is a function that is easily accomplished by human observers, they noted.

Questions on data use

Data confidentiality, ownership, access, transmission, chain of custody, and storage are all questions that must be worked out in order to implement standard electronic monitoring protocols, the group said.

Also to be answered is the question of whether video information may be used for law enforcement purposes to prosecute infractions – the way human monitoring may now be used.
And, of course, there’s the question of who will pay for the technologies. If there is to be cost-sharing between the industry and the government, funding mechanisms from the government side need to be worked out, the group said.

In the 2010 groundfish fishing year, the Woods Hole, Mass.-based Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) and Archipelago Marine Research Ltd. began a multi-year pilot project, which continued through 2013, to test technology to collect catch and fishing effort data abroad commercial vessels in relation to sector-based management. The technology comprised a combination of passive electronic systems, such as video cameras, motion sensors, locator devices, and computers to detect fishing events and capture catch handling practices. The goal was to test whether the technology was capable of “seeing” – through cameras placed at control points on the vessels – discards of species, per normal fishing requirements: these included incidentally caught marine mammals, seabirds, sea turtles, endangered fish, large pelagic fish, lobster, thorny, barndoor, or smooth skate, wolfish, or Atlantic halibut.

At their meeting, members of the working group learned that, while monitoring some discards was easy, others, such as various hakes, were more difficult because of their similarity. “We can’t tell them apart on camera,” said one member. “It’s even difficult for observers and even dealers to tell them apart.” The group has been charged with coming up with answers in “as short a timeframe as possible” – and possibly in time to implement for the 2014 groundfishing year. That might be possible, members said, if they come up with protocols and standards, and let groundfish sectors develop their own monitoring programs, with the technology and plan subject to government approval.

In January, NMFS will hold a National Electronic Monitoring Workshop in Seattle, to be followed by regional workshops. Challenges and solutions will continue to be addressed at those times.

“We’ve got to think what we want this tool to do,” said Portland fisherman and NEFMC member Vincent Balzano. “It can’t do everything.” “And we should be explicit about what aspects of the observer program or human observer-collected information will continue,” said Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance policy director and NEFMC member Tom Dempsey.