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Catch Reporting





MANUAL CATCH REPORTING


The general industry practice is to write out a catch report on paper, and present it to a fisheries management official when they return to port. If information does not seem plausible to the official, the report may be verified by physical inspection of the catch. Alternatively, a suspicious vessel may need to carry an independent observer on future voyages.


SEMI-AUTOMATED CATCH REPORTING


Some Vessel Monitoring Systems have features that collect, from keyboard input, the data that constitutes a catch report for the entire voyage. More advanced systems periodically transmit the current catch as electronic mail, so fisheries management centers can determine if a controlled area needs to be closed to further fishing.

While there is no standardization as yet for catch reports, a starting point came from an 1981 Conference of Experts Expert Consultation on Monitoring, Control and Surveillance Systems for Fisheries Management :

  • Catch on entry to each controlled area

  • Weekly catch

  • Transshipment

  • Port of landing

  • Catch on exiting a controlled area

  • Days at sea

  • Daily time at sea

  • Seasonal catch limits

  • Per-trip catch limits

  • Limits on catch within certain areas

  • Individual (vessel) transferable quotas

  • Minimum or maximum fish (or shellfish) sizes


This was extended, in 1993, to include: "Community-based fishery management: towards the restoration of traditional practices in the South Pacific", ''Marine Policy'' 17(2): 108-117 1993 to include the measurement of:
  • catch

  • species composition

  • fishing effort

  • Bycatch (i.e., species unintentionally caught, such as dolphins in tuna fishery)

  • area of operations


A number of programs require tracking of days at sea (DAS) for a given vessel. They may require tracking the total cumulative catch of a given fishery.


MAJOR TRENDS


Where the local fishery economy permits, perhaps with international funding, near-real-time catch reporting will become a basic feature of vessel management systems. Software at fisheries management centers will cross-correlate VMS position information, catch reports, and spot inspection reports.


REFERENCES